


By Any Other Name

by ausgezeichnet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fake Marriage, Fluff, Honeymoon, M/M, Pining, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, also did i mention they're idiots, cw: brief depiction of verbal sexual harrassment, they're really very bad at being covert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ausgezeichnet/pseuds/ausgezeichnet
Summary: The regular meetings between Brother Francis and Nanny Ashtoreth don't go unnoticed by the Dowlings and their other employees. When Mr. Dowling implies the clandestine meetings should stop, Crowley comes up with an easy solution: Brother Francis and Nanny Ashtoreth should get married.What could possibly go wrong?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back with more Good Omens ridiculous-ness! Woo!!! 
> 
> Since I'm now working full-time, I can't promise a regular update schedule, but I promise I do have more written and a general idea of where the story is going, so bear with me. Mind the tags, and I'll include content warnings in the notes as appropriate. This really will be mostly fluff and pining, I swear, unless a plot grows on me. Because this fic involves their time undercover as Brother Francis/Nanny Ashtoreth, I will be switching names and pronouns throughout. Please let me know if something's unclear. 
> 
> Quoting Shakespeare in the title because they're going by different names but they still love each other! Get it??? Get it???!?!?

Hiding requires a surprising amount of skill. The signature mistake of the amateur hider is trying too hard, and thus signaling to the world that they are hiding. In attempting very hard not to be noticed, they make themselves overly conspicuous. A child standing stiff-legged behind a long curtain will always be found; a nonchalant spy strolling through their environment with an air of confident authority will never be noticed. 

Crowley and Aziraphale knew all about hiding in plain sight, having lived among the humans for six thousand years, but learning to blend in was another matter entirely. They tended to discard human social conventions the moment they became inconvenient. Their meetings, like the meetings of the diplomats in St. James’ Park, did not really go unnoticed by humanity, but settled along the border of weird that most people generally decided not to concern themselves with. 

Humans, for all their curiosity, adapt to strangeness remarkably quickly. If Crowley’s snake eyes were revealed to a passer-by on the street with a slip of his sunglasses, the initial shock of the casual observer would quickly fade into the back of their mind, and just as easily be dismissed as a flight of fancy or a trick of the light. 

All of this goes to explain how an angel disguised as a gardener and a demon disguised as a nanny believed they were meeting covertly as they stood side-by-side behind an enormous wilting rhododendron bush at the edge of the gardens surrounding the London residence of the American Cultural Attache. Like amateurs playing hide and seek, they were trying very hard to appear casual. Unfortunately, the eyes observing them from afar were more well-trained and less inclined to dismiss strangeness than the pedestrians on the streets of London. Their posture clearly indicated to Bryce, the security officer stationed on the roof that Something was Up. He readjusted the focus on his binoculars and squinted, trying to read their lips. 

Down by the rhododendron bush, Brother Francis frowned at the drooping flowers. 

“They’re wilting because you don’t bloody water them, angel,” Nanny Ashtoreth said. 

“I don’t see why they should _need _water,” Brother Francis answered. “It rains often enough.” 

Nanny Ashtoreth curled her lip in disgust. “It’s a miracle anyone hired you as a gardener.” 

Aziraphale turned to Crowley with a sparkle in his eye. "If the shoe fits-” 

“Turn of phrase. How are things on your end?” Crowley asked. “Warlock do anything particularly moral lately?”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, displeased, “I was rather excited by the prospect of him feeding the squirrels until he began pelting them with pecans.”

Crowley hummed. He thought the whole operation was going rather well. Nanny Ashtoreth corrupted, Brother Francis countered, and the needle on the cosmic scale of demonic and angelic influence swung back and forth in a wide arc that would hopefully land on neutral. 

He'd even grown accustomed to living in the Dowling home, although the strict, humorless professionalism of the security agents during working hours still gave him the heebie-jeebies, and not the spooky kind he enjoyed. _Americans_. He glanced up at the agent stationed on the roof, who appeared to be watching them through his binoculars. 

Bryce shrunk back down as Nanny’s sunglasses turned in his direction. Despite all his training and his tours in the middle east, the woman inexplicably scared him (then again, he’d had a mishap with a Mary Poppins impersonator and a faulty flying umbrella when involved in youth theater, so perhaps Crowley doesn’t deserve all of the credit). 

“It'll be fine,” Crowley said. “Best be off. Warlock will be up soon, and someone's getting nosy.”

He nodded up at the roof, pointing with his chin. Aziraphale narrowed his eyes, peering up at the agent. The long-distance staring contest continued for a few seconds before Aziraphale looked down and began clipping at the fading pink rhododendron flowers. He sighed, then began gently projecting a healing glow, barely visible in the late afternoon sunlight. 

“Stop that,” Crowley said. “You’ve got to learn to care for them properly. Give them a talking-to once in a while.” 

The bush was perking up already, dead flowers once again coming into bloom. Aziraphale ignored Crowley, but beamed benevolently at the plant as it perked up. 

“There,” he said. “You’re doing so well. Oh, look at you, you look so lovely already." 

The flowers, to the extent that flowers are capable of such an action, beamed.

“That’s not what I meant by a talking-to, you idiot,” Crowley said. He glanced up at the nosy agent on the roof, who was staring at the revitalized rhododendron bush suspiciously. Crowley shattered the lenses of the agent's binoculars with a thought, before backing away, sensible block heels sinking into the loam, and loudly saying, “Glad to discuss Warlock’s education with you, fellow employee.” 

“What are you doing?” Aziraphale said, bewildered. 

“Read about it in a spy novel,” Crowley hissed. “Just act natural.” 

“You’re hardly acting natural,” Aziraphale said disapprovingly. “You should really read better books, you know.” 

“Shhh,” Crowley said. “Go with it. Come on, angel.” 

“Fine,” Aziraphale sighed, before continuing in a much louder voice tinged with Brother Francis’ terrible affected accent, “Ahh, yes, I always love tah talk about our young charge with you, Nanny. Have yourself a fine afternoon, now.” 

Nanny Ashtoreth nodded primly and walked away, congratulating herself on another successful meeting. She glared at the dirt until the ground decided to provide a solid walking surface for her heels, and strode back into the house. 

Up on the roof, Bryce stared at his broken binoculars. He’d barely been able to make out half of the conversation, but the nanny referring to the gardener as “angel”? This development would need to go in their personnel files. Could be an HR liability if things went sour between them, and interoffice romance was strongly discouraged by the family. He reached up a hand to his earpiece. 

“Hey, Bennie?” he said. 

“Yeah?” said Bennie from the control room. 

“Increase surveillance on the nanny and the gardener,” he said. “Something’s not right.” 

The conferences continued, watched from afar, over cups of tea in the gardener’s cottage, through crackling pilfered baby monitors while Warlock slept, and in the dusty attic. Crowley often pretended he was James Bond, although he’d willingly return to hell before he’d admit that particular fantasy to Aziraphale (who, of course, already knew). The clandestine conversations continued covertly, or so they thought until Mr. Dowling summoned Nanny Ashtoreth into his office on a drizzly Tuesday afternoon. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update because I already had this scene mostly written!! Woo!!
> 
> Content Warning: This chapter contains descriptions of verbal workplace sexual harassment. If you'd like a more specific description of the scene, or you just want to skip this chapter, there's a more detailed description in the end notes. This will be the only chapter where this happens, although it will affect the rest of the story. 
> 
> Next chapter will be this weekend? Hopefully? Comments are motivation AND love!! Whoa!!

Thaddeus J. Dowling was approaching his son's childhood with the same approach he used during his son's birth: observing and supporting from afar, with occasional bursts of revulsion. Dowling would perhaps be more interested in Warlock once the baby developed the ability to play baseball and talk politics (or at the very least figured out bathrooms). 

Whenever she needed a parental decision, Nanny generally consulted Harriet Dowling, who would look flustered until Nanny demurely offered a solution, which Harriet would gratefully accept. Harriet did not share her husband's disdain for children who weren’t even interesting enough to join the conversation during happy hour, but she seemed generally relieved to defer to an expert opinion. Only the best for her little boy. 

As such, Nanny Ashtoreth walked down the carpeted hallway of the mansion towards the first floor corner office with a few nervous twinges in her trouble sensors (and a healthy heaping of annoyance). Warlock was playing with blocks upstairs under the professionally watchful eye of one of the ubiquitous bodyguards, but she hated leaving the child with anyone who would not love him. The guards had to remain vigilant, whether flanking Mr. Dowling or looming over a toddler. 

She knocked crisply on the old walnut door of Dowling's office and turned the brass knob to enter without waiting for a response. Mr. Dowling startled at his desk as the massive door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Nanny could see him furtively closing internet tabs as she strode into the room. 

“Ah, Miss Ashtoreth,” he said, folding his hands on his desk and regaining his composure. “Please close the door.”

“Certainly,” she said, shutting the door with a click. She walked across the plush carpeting that covered the hardwood floors of the room, a cavernous space paneled with dark wood and lined with important looking books on glass-doored bookshelves (the shelves held leather bound volumes on law and politics which no one consulted anymore, but which looked rather imposing, as well as one single book of cowboy erotica left as a prank. No one had noticed it).

She settled into the antique wooden chair in front of the massive carved monolith of a desk, neatly crossing her stocking-clad legs at the ankle. “You wanted to see me?” she asked. 

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Dowling said. “Yes, I did.”

Nanny quirked one well-groomed eyebrow and waited. 

Dowling cleared his throat. “Awful weather we're having,” he ventured. 

“Well, yes,” Nanny said. “That's England for you.”

“Oh, sure, yeah,” Dowling said. He seemed to be turning over the phrasing of something in his mind, eyeing her up and down with an uncomfortably assessing eye, but Nanny was quickly losing her patience. 

She leaned forward with a vaguely menacing smile. “Was there something you wished to discuss with me?”

Mr. Dowling heaved himself out of the imposing padded leather office chair and beginning to pace behind his desk, crossing his hands behind his back with a magisterial air. “You know, perception is everything in this world,” he said, with the manner of a terrible actor guest-starring as the president on an American television show. “Professionalism and reputation. Can’t underrate them.” 

“I hope my services are satisfactory?” Nanny said, growing diplomatically annoyed. 

“What? Oh. Oh, yeah, you're doing fine with the little tyke,” Mr. Dowling said, stopping behind his desk and gripping his chair with white knuckles. “It's a… personal issue I wanted to discuss with you.”

Nanny leaned back, pursing her lips in disapproval. Everyone knew that nannies must retain a certain level of personal mystery in order to be successful. If they did have personal lives, they very studiously pretended to have forgotten them during working hours, and they certainly did not discuss them with their employers. Honestly, sometimes Crowley suspected Mr. Dowling had never even seen Mary Poppins. 

“I don't believe I'm quite the right person to help you resolve your _personal issues, _sir,” Nanny said coldly. 

Mr. Dowling gripped the chair back harder, his fingers leaving imprints in the leather. “I've heard some reports from the security staff that you and the gardener are...close.”

“We occasionally enjoy each other's company,” Nanny sniffed. “As colleagues, of course.”

“Colleagues, huh?”

“Of a sort,” Nanny said, thinking on thousands of years of earthly cooperation with a facade of mutual antagonism. “Your point, _sir_?”

“I don't want the woman who watches my son fucking the gardener,” Mr. Dowling spat. “Warlock likes you, and I don't want to disappoint him, but I will have to fire you unless this stops, now. It's not right.”

Nanny stared at him, momentarily stunned speechless and overwhelmed by the desire to torch her employer in hellfire.

“I don't quite catch your meaning,” she lied. 

“Look, I don't want to be a hardass about this,” Mr. Dowling said, looking up and down the long lines of Nanny's tweed-clad form. “Tell you what. I'd be willing to turn a blind eye… if you make it worth my while.”

Nanny blinked, slow and predatory, as she reminded herself all the reasons she couldn't rip the adoptive father of the Antichrist's arms from his body. The urge to exact demonic punishment rarely overcame her basic instinct for widespread misery-inducing mischief, but in that moment, she wanted _blood. _She smiled, but there was not an ounce of joy expressed in the baring of her oddly pointy teeth. “I'm afraid I still don't understand,” she said. 

“Oh, come on,” Dowling said. “If you can stand hooking up with someone who looks like _that_, I figure you might not mind putting out for me.”

Nanny seethed, and entertained a fantasy of hellhounds ripping Dowling limb from limb. Would it be so bad if the Antichrist grew up without a father, especially if the father was an asshole of this magnitude?

Dowling leaned back, relaxed in his chair as he studied her reaction. “Look, if you're not game, then it might be best if we reconsidered your employment here after all,” he said. “Think on it.”

“I will certainly put some thought into it,” Nanny said shortly, rising from her chair and smoothing down the wrinkles in her pencil skirt with a quick brush of her hands down her thighs. Dowling leered, smirking to himself as Nanny turned and walked out of the room, gears already turning in her sensibly coiffed head. 

He would pay for that. Physical punishment would require too much paperwork, but she was highly skilled in the art of inconvenience, and she would have her earthly satisfaction before Dowling burned in the pits for all eternity. 

Knobhead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: Mr. Dowling asks Nanny Ashtoreth to come into his office. After a slightly awkward beginning to the conversation, Dowling comments that nanny seems close to the gardener. Ashtoreth replies that they're colleagues. Dowling replies that he doesn't want the woman looking after his son having sex with the gardener, and this should stop now. He then implies that they could ignore the situation if Ashtoreth gives him sexual favors, implicitly making it a condition of her employment. Ashtoreth, being a demon, briefly fantasizes about retaliating with acts of violence, but does not really respond. She says she will think about it, and leaves plotting unspecific revenge.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I seem to have settled on using he/him pronouns for Crowley when referring to him as Crowley and she/her when referring to Nanny Ashtoreth with her name. This is mostly for the sake of clarity, since that seems to be the rule in the show, and not intended to make any statement about Crowley's gender identity, which is wildly open to interpretation and not remotely the point of this story. 
> 
> Getting to the fake marriage plot now!! Woo!!

When considering her nanny persona, Crowley determined a few essential facts:

1\. Nanny did not drink often, with the exception of a constitutional glass of sherry in the evenings.

2\. If this was not accurate, strictly speaking, then no one would ever find out the truth. 

3\. Nanny could, if necessary, hold her liquor like a Russian sailor (Crowley cheated with demonic miracles, but it was the principle of the matter). 

Whatever she had previously determined, Nanny Ashtoreth was more than half-way to soused when she snaked her way up the front path and pounded on the door of the gardener's cottage. 

The cottage was a one-story structure tucked in a copse of trees towards the back of the estate grounds. The building still had a thatched roof, although that was a recent addition based solely on Aziraphale's expectation that it would have one (the straw roof, of course, miraculously never leaked or needed repair). Red rhododendrons glowing in the waning evening light bloomed in boxes hung from the front windows and enormous rose bushes lined the front walk. It was a verdant idyll of former centuries, and entirely unlikely given that Aziraphale never watered a single plant. 

Eventually, Aziraphale opened the door to end Crowley's incessant knocking. He was wiping his hands on a rag (for the sake of the aesthetic, not because he'd gotten remotely dirty), and as he pulled the door open, he said with an implacable twang, “Now what do we have here on this fine evening- oh. Crowley, it's you. Do come in.”

Crowley stepped forward into the small front room, with its cheerful tartan couch and dusty bookshelves. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled. 

“I wasn't expecting you tonight,” Aziraphale said, closing the door behind them. “Tea? Wine? Something stronger?”

“Alcohol. Anything alcoholic,” Crowley said as he threw himself onto the couch, sitting as relaxed as his starched skirts would allow. 

Aziraphale frowned as he walked past Crowley into the kitchen, mentally running through a checklist of his wine cabinet. “Is something the matter, my dear?” he asked in passing. 

Crowley sighed, wriggling down further into the couch. “Dowling said we've been seeing each other too much,“ Crowley said. “Said he doesn't want the woman minding his son sleeping around. Bunch of sexist tripe if you ask me.“

Standing in the doorway with a bottle of red in his hands, Aziraphale froze. “What?” he said. 

“Oh, don't fuss,” Crowley said. “Nothing happened. I'll take his hands off if he tries to touch me.”

Aziraphale walked across the room and sat down in the faded floral armchair across from the couch where Crowley was sinking further into a despondent sprawl. He poured a healthy glass of red and passed it over the coffee table to Crowley, who took a massive gulp. “I certainly will make a fuss! Such- blatant and clear abuse of authority cannot be allowed to stand,” Aziraphale said. 

“Nothin' to be done about it, angel,” Crowley said, smacking his wine-red lips, “human women have been trying for centaur- censure- _a long bloody time_ to get them to stop, and it just keeps happening.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said, wind deflating in his sails. “There must be _something _two supernatural entities can do.”

“Nah, 's too much paperwork to kill him, and They're watching,” Crowley said with a shudder. “Above and Below.” 

“Could we… frighten him?” Aziraphale ventured. 

“Think I already do that sometimes,” Crowley said. “You really learn about people when you dress like this, I gotta say.”

“We must do _something _to help him see the error of his ways,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley scoffed and took another sip of wine. 

“Perhaps there are training manuals? Or... videos? Internet websites?” Aziraphale said. 

“Pfft,” Crowley said. “No one's ever paid attention to those. They let the companies cover their own asses, they don't actually _work_.”

“Ah," Aziraphale said. "A strongly worded letter?" 

Crowley fixed him with a withering glare, and the conversation plummeted into a gulf of silence. Aziraphale poured himself a slightly less generous glass of wine and took a sip. It was full-bodied and smooth, with complex notes of fruit that he couldn't bring himself to enjoy at the moment. A shame. 

Crowley stilled, pulling off Nanny's angular sunglasses. “What if…” he trailed off. 

“What if what, dear?” Aziraphale said. “Best not leave the thought unfinished.”

“Angel,” Crowley said. “What does everybody hate about summer?”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Wasps? Humidity? Seasonal allergies? Oh! Teenagers out of school and trying to buy your books for their summer reading lists?”

“What? No,” Crowley said. “_Summer weddings.”_

Aziraphale frowned. “I rather like weddings,” he said doubtfully. 

“Oh, come on,” Crowley said. “They're a massive inconvenience. First you buy gifts, then you buy the outfit, then you gotta travel, and then you get drunk and hook up with a photographer. Whole thing's a nightmare.”

“I didn't know you were invited to so many weddings,” Aziraphale said. The aftertaste of the wine was suddenly sour in his mouth. 

“Did some work on jacking up the prices of wedding caterers a few years back,” Crowley said. “Trust me, the whole thing's hellish.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale said. “But he's already married. How will this help us exact our revenge?”

“We get married,” Crowley said triumphantly, slamming his wineglass down on the coffee table and raising his arms in the air. 

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Don't be absurd, Crowley!” Aziraphale said. “You- you haven't even proposed! And what will, ah, the respective parties above and below have to say about it?”

Crowley stared. “_That's _what you're worried about? My proposal?”

“Well?” Aziraphale said stubbornly. 

“Oh, for the wrath of Satan- not _us, _you idiot! Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis!”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “Whatever for?”

Crowley began twiddling with a loose string on the couch. “He might have also implied that if anyone should be getting favors around here, it should be him.”

“Favors?”

“Sex.”

“Ah. That's- that's awful, Crowley!”

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed morosely. “So. Come on. Can't burn him in hellfire just yet, but this'll piss him off.”

“Oh?”

“Sure, yeah. He told me to stop seeing you, so I do the opposite,“ Crowley said. “Might be able to tempt him into lust and envy, log a few extra hours on the clock. Trust me. We make him dress up in a pastel suit and do the macarena and he'll hate us for all time.“

Aziraphale nodded slowly, looking thoughtful. “If you believe it'll spare you the indignity of harassment,” he said. “Then I’ll do it.” 

Crowley snorted. “Men like that aren't gonna be deterred by a ring, angel. But it'll be a good excuse to meet up. Less sneaking.”

“You _like _sneaking,” Aziraphale pointed out. 

“Well, yeah, but not a big fan of the whole harassment business,” Crowley said. “One of humanity’s worst inventions.” 

Aziraphale nodded, taking another sip of wine. 

“Right then,” Crowley said. “Let's go.“

“What, now?“

“No time like the present, angel,“ Crowley said. “Day's a-wasting.“

“For what?” 

“Gotta apply for a license,“ Crowley said. “Gonna be legal, those nutters in suits will check.“

“Won't the registry office be closed?“

“I believe they have special extended hours,“ Crowley said with a snap of his fingers. 

“Well then,“ Aziraphale said. “I-ah. I suppose we better get on with it.“

Crowley's gaze locked with Aziraphale's eyes, suddenly intense. Aziraphale suppressed a shudder at the depth of feeling in his eyes, even behind the re-donned sunglasses. 

“Yeah, let's get on with it,“ Crowley said, and Aziraphale dutifully followed him out of the cottage, throat suddenly dry. For once, they left bottle of wine only half drunk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments water my flowers :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *a wedding march starts playing* It's here, folks!! The fake marriage part of the fake marriage fic is happening!! Except they're actually having a real marriage ceremony because I said so. 
> 
> I've decided on a Wednesday/Sunday update schedule for this fic now that we're in true WIP territory. Real life may intervene, but I'm feeling optimistic.

To the other members of the Dowling household, the plans for the wedding of Brother Francis and Nanny Ashtoreth seemed to come together suspiciously quickly. Some might even call fitting several months of human wedding planning into the space of three days downright miraculous. 

The gossip whirlwind sparked off early Wednesday morning when the pair walked into Mr. Dowling’s office. Twenty minutes later, a gray-faced and oddly sweaty Mr. Dowling informed the cook that there would be a wedding held on the estate that weekend. The rumors swirled furiously. Had they blackmailed him? Was it an elaborate prank? They didn’t seem the sort, both sensible and middle-aged, although Ashtoreth certainly seemed like she was harboring secrets, either hiding a soft heart or several murders in her past. 

Stefano, the pastry chef, spent the whole morning telling anyone who would listen that the pair had been having a torrid love affair for months, and only the threat of separation drove them to take extreme measures. Georgia, the line cook sweating over a pot of tomato sauce, laughed in his face. Ashtoreth clearly wanted larger quarters than her small room on the third floor and had bullied Francis into marriage, she said. They didn’t even like each other. 

Aziraphale and Crowley, unaware of the endless speculation among the other staff, were busy cheating their way through wedding planning, dispensing miracles with wild abandon. To their immense irritation, they were discovering what an incredibly _ human _thing marriage was: an emotional, formal, expensive, legally complicated ritual about which everyone had a different opinion. It was exhausting. Crowley’s hair was sticking out at odd angles, and even Aziraphale’s well of angelic patience was running low. 

"Do we want embossed cardstock invitations, or will simple printed cardstock do?" Aziraphale asked, flipping through the first of a stack of wedding magazines piled in front of him on the coffee table with an increasingly bewildered look as he took in the nearly infinite variety of very expensive wedding-specific items. 

"Who are we inviting?" Crowley said. "Hastur from my side, Gabriel from yours? No thanks. Rather avoid a brawl at the wedding.” 

“Quite right,” Aziraphale said with a shudder. He frowned down at an article debating the merits of church weddings versus ceremonies hosted in secular locations. The magazine claimed church weddings invited fewer awkward questions from the grandparents, while marriages in rented halls tended to avoid religious panic and long discussions about conversion (even when neither party was remotely religious). 

“Would you be entirely opposed to the idea of a church wedding?” Aziraphale asked. “I know, I know, demon, but it is more traditional, and I believe it would better suit the personality of Brother Francis.” 

Crowley raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Remember the church, during the Blitz?” he asked. “You really want me to be doing _ that _the whole time were getting married?"

“Oh, all right then," Aziraphale said. “I thought Nanny Ashtoreth seemed like the traditional sort as well."

“She's a modern woman!" Crowley said, indignant. “You can't assume anything based on her appearance. Maybe she reads feminist literature in her free time."

“You read feminist literature?"

“What? No," Crowley said. “But Nanny might. You don't know."

“You _ are _ Nanny," Aziraphale said. 

“Eh," Crowley said. “Technicalities."

Azirpahale sighed, setting the wedding magazine on top of the stack on the table in front of him. “I suppose you’d also object to angel food cake as the wedding cake?” 

Crowley rolled his head to the side to look at him, slumping back on the couch with his oddly liquid serpentine spine. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” he said. 

“Simply attempting to lighten the mood,” Aziraphale said. “So. Where do you want to hold the ceremony?” 

“The garden,” Crowley said, quickly, then blushed. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, nodding as he chewed over the idea. “Well. I can hardly think of a more appropriate venue than that.”

Aziraphale felt himself beginning to blush under Crowley’s intense scrutiny for a silent minute. He found himself recalling that first conversation on the walls of Eden, when he’d felt the force of Crowley’s curious regard fall on him for the first time. Everything had, of course, begun in a garden, but that was all beside the point. He reminded himself once again: Nanny Ashtoreth was marrying Brother Francis, but he wasn’t marrying Crowley. 

Wasn’t he?

“One more thing,” Crowley said. Aziraphale felt the tension between them snap taut. 

“Other than our sudden impending nuptials?" he managed. 

“Nah, about that," Crowley said, oblivious to the stiffness in Aziraphale's shoulders. “Lose those stupid teeth, would you?"

“They're part of the character!" Aziraphale protested, relaxing. 

“Not anymore," Crowley said, reaching forward to yank the denture from Aziraphale's mouth. 

Or he would have, at least, had Aziraphale not miracled his actual teeth into the protruding grin of Brother Francis. 

“Ow!" Aziraphale said. “Leb go ob my teef."

Crowley yanked his hand back, hissing in disgust. “Are thosssse real?"

“I was striving for authenticity!" Aziraphale said. “That hurt, you know."

“Just fix them, angel," Crowley said. “Call it emergency dental work. I don't care. Just get rid of them."

Nanny Ashtoreth soon retired back to the main house for the rest of the evening, leaving behind a sulking Aziraphale with pearly straightened teeth. She avoided curious eyes around every corner, and gently deflected a curious Warlock's questions as she tucked him in for the evening. 

In the kitchen, Georgia crowed that the couple spending the night apart from one other proved her right, and she bet the dishwasher five dollars that the wedding wouldn't take place at all. A disgruntled Stefano, busy mixing buttercream wedding cake frosting, maintained that they were only being traditional with separation during engagement. 

Still, despite the doubts and rumors, and without any member of the security team seeing a single worker, the wedding venue was rapidly assembled over the course of the next two nights: a platform backed by a trellis hung with climbing morning glory vines in front of white chairs lining a central aisle, and a pitched tent with quite a few corked bottles of expensive-looking wine all suddenly appeared on the lawn, ringed by the unusually verdant-looking rose bushes in the back garden. 

Saturday morning arrived warm and clear-skied, one of the last beautiful days of late summer. 

Crowley woke up in his small room on the third floor and stared at the ceiling for a moment. He was marrying Aziraphale today. A frisson of nervous tingling rolled down his body, and he rustled his tucked-away wings. It wasn't real. _ He _ wasn't getting married, and the person _ she _was marrying certainly wasn't Aziraphale. Still, no matter how you sliced the cake, he would be walking down the aisle today to stand in front of a non-denominational officiant. His lips would speak promises to care for and cherish Aziraphale, or at least the person Aziraphale was pretending to be. 

As he levered himself up in bed, catching sight of his cream wedding dress with intricate black lace detailing hanging on the back of the door, he silently resolved to honor those vows, even if Aziraphale believed them to be mere pretense. Besides, they were as good as married already. What else did you call someone who relentlessly challenged, irritated, supported, and intrigued you for your entire life?

Viciously tamping down that notion, Crowley shook his head, rising to get ready. 

It wasn't real. 

Meanwhile, in the gardener's cottage, Aziraphale was preoccupied with fretting over waistcoats to avoid thinking about the wedding (which, since the waistcoat was for the wedding, was not a very effective strategy). 

If pressed, he would inform his superiors that he was providing an example of godly marriage to the community and thus exerting a positive influence. It was work, that was all. A necessary step to allow Nanny Ashtoreth to continue in her position raising the Antichrist. The whole business was a charade. Yet he found himself unaccountably nervous as he stood in front of his bedroom closet, debating between the light blue waistcoat with brass buttons in his left hand and the cream waistcoat with black buttons in his right hand. 

The cream waistcoat was certainly more formal, but would a simple gardener like Brother Francis own such a garment? He returned his attention to the blue waistcoat. Not what he would choose, but then again, he wasn't getting married as himself. 

It was strictly business. A favor to Crowley, like any other part of the Arrangement. There was no reason for his hands to be shaking. 

Outside in the rose garden, the first guest had arrived. Thaddeus Dowling, who was very much not having a good day, sat miserably in the front aisle. The wedding invitation had specified which color clothing he should wear to maximize the effect of the choreographed dance at the reception. Every attendee would supposedly be wearing a brightly colored outfit, to accentuate the joyous atmosphere. Dowling's invitation also told him to arrive at 1 pm precisely (every other member of the household had been invited to a ceremony beginning at 4 pm, and told to dress in their normal clothing, a fact that would certainly not improve Thaddeus Dowling's afternoon).

Feeling self-conscious under the watchful eye of the guard, Dowling squared his shoulders, clad in a violent shade of neon yellow as they were. He smoothed a hand down his lime green tie and recalled the conversation from two days ago in his office with a shudder. He'd been so flabbergasted by the sight of Nanny's shark-toothed grin as she hung on Francis' arm and dangled a ring-clad finger in his face that he'd forgotten to raise any objection to the use of the estate grounds for the wedding. 

Dowling looked around at the neat rows of empty chairs behind him. The impassive security agent standing at the end of the row of chairs cracked a small smile. 

“What?" Dowling demanded, hating every ounce of the smarmy grin behind dark sunglasses. 

“Nothing, sir," the man said, schooling his expression. “Just admiring your suit, sir."

“Fuck this," Dowling muttered, preparing to stand. He paused with his hands resting on his thighs, then contemplated the sharp contours of Nanny Ashtoreth's smile and her long black nails daintily resting on Brother Francis' forearm. Defeated, Dowling slumped back in his chair and waited. 

And waited. 

And waited some more. 

And continued waiting, almost standing to leave at least two more times and held back by the lingering memory of a snake-like grin every time. The guard was openly smirking now. He was having a very good day indeed, and was considering whether or not sneaking a picture of a high level diplomat in a ridiculous outfit would get him fired (it would have, if anyone on the IT team understood Snapchat). 

Two hours later, the guests arrived: the other members of the household shuffled into the chairs, all avoiding Dowling. Not a single other person was dressed in colorful clothing, yet alone a bright yellow suit. 

Harriet, clad in a lovely blue dress, plunked down next to Thaddeus and looked him over with raised eyebrows. "What on _ earth _are you wearing?" she asked. 

“I don't want to talk about it," grumbled Dowling. He briefly contemplated the notion that this whole wedding had been specifically engineered to annoy him, then dismissed it as ridiculous. 

Three-and-a-half hours after Dowling arrived, Brother Francis walked down the aisle. Murmurs arose among the guests as they took in his trimmed sideburns and even teeth. He was dressed in a linen suit and a light blue waistcoat, and his rosy cheeks completed his cherubic appearance. 

The officiant took her place on the platform. Francis clasped his hands in front of him, nervously rocking on his heels. The crowd held its breath, waiting for the swell of music. 

A dramatic swell of violins filled the tent (although Crowley had neglected to add speakers, or any form of sound system). Warlock Dowling, dressed smartly in a tiny black suit, walked down the aisle, scattering blood red rose petals. 

As the violin music began to mutate into an acoustic version of Queen's “Crazy Little Thing Called Love," Ashtoreth began walking down the aisle. 

She was, in a word, stunning. The slim-fitting floor-length gown in silken fabric accentuated the slight curve of her hips, and long sleeves and black lace detailing at the v-neck collar made the modestly cut gown seem anything but dowdy. At the altar, Francis' jaw dropped slightly open. 

Thaddeus Dowling shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling even more ridiculous in his yellow suit in the face of such elegance. Stefano teared up. Georgia passed the dishwasher $5. 

As she slowly advanced down the aisle, Ashtoreth smiled as she felt the emotions of the humans around her: lust and envy, with a cloud of embarrassment from Thaddeus. She relished the sight of his absurd suit and perpetual scowl, briefly congratulating herself on a plan-well executed. Then she made eye contact with Francis, and everything, from the black and green swirl of human emotions to the strains of music, simply fell away. No matter what he was calling himself, those were Aziraphale's eyes, and those eyes were equally enraptured in her, because she was Crowley, no matter what she was calling herself. Neither could tear their gazes away. The world narrowed to them and them alone. 

Ashtoreth reached the end of the aisle and stepped up onto the platform, moving as if entranced. The chemistry became palpably heavy like humidity in the air. 

“Yay!! Nanny!!!" Warlock yelled from the side, before his mother shushed him. Harriet found herself holding her breath. Her own wedding had felt nothing like this. 

The officiant spoke in a honey-warm, low tone, speaking the ceremonial words with deliberate slowness. In the golden sunlight of late afternoon, time itself seemed to melt and blur. Even the stoic security officers leaned forward, sensing magic in the air. 

Looking up from her book and regarding each of them with serious dark brown eyes, the officiant asked both of them in turn if they would promise to honor, cherish, and care for their spouse, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live. 

_ It's not real, _thought Crowley, as her mouth said, “I do."

_ It's just for work, _thought Aziraphale as his mouth said, “I do."

The officiant beamed benevolently at them, tucking her notes under her arm. “I now pronounce you man and wife," she said. “You may kiss the bride."

Aziraphale was nearly distracted by thinking about the intricacies of human gender norms before the officiant said the word _ kiss. _He swallowed, looking at Crowley's thin lips. 

Ever willing to make a leap and hope Aziraphale would meet him in the middle, Crowley leaned forwards. The guests watched as Francis stepped forward to meet her lips, almost shyly. They both instantly melted into the kiss, stepping into each other's bodies and losing themselves for a good five seconds. Stefano let out a whoop from the back of the room, and the pair broke apart, looking dazed. 

The reception and dinner on the back lawn passed by in a blur for both of them. Later, Crowley would remember with vicious satisfaction the sight of Dowling, still in his bright yellow suit, doing the macarena with a bewildered expression, like he couldn't fathom how his life had brought him to that moment. 

Wine flowed freely. The cake slowly vanished. Ashtoreth and Francis danced their first dance to a song that was not supposed to be a slower version of Queen's “You're My Best Friend", but was certainly “You're My Best Friend" regardless of the intent of the terrible DJ conjured from some corner of hell (perhaps literally, perhaps not). They pressed close, warm and drunk on the atmosphere and several bottles of excellent wine. 

The evening wound down with a spectacular blaze of fiery sunset. Fairy lights illuminated the wedding tent, now cleared to form a dance floor, and Ashtoreth and Francis remained in the center of the floor with a few other couples, not doing anything more than holding each other and swaying (the other kinds of dancing they could manage were decidedly not appropriate for the venue or time period). The guests left them absorbed in each other, hiding smiles behind their wineglasses as they observed the couple. 

Unexpectedly, both Crowley and Aziraphale found themselves totally swept along by the heady atmosphere and unable to let go of one another. The night felt like thousands of other intimate nights spent drinking and talking and laughing over the years, but they had never allowed themselves to be so openly affectionate before, and certainly not in public. Aziraphale felt like he was at a masquerade ball-- hiding his true identity, and therefore free to express himself freely. Crowley was like a charmed snake, swaying in dance and utterly enthralled. 

At the end of the night, after the DJ had dutifully played Green Day's "Good Riddance" and the other guests had stumbled away, drunk and laughing, Crowley and Aziraphale walked hand-in-hand back to the gardener's cottage. They walked in sync, perfectly attuned to each other and not saying a word. In those moments, they knew no power above or below, or any connection beside the bond thrumming electric between them. They were _ married. _

As they walked into the cottage, the door closing behind them, they regarded each other for a moment. The reality of their respective roles in the eternal struggle between heaven and hell reasserted itself with a sickening swoop in both of their stomachs. It had been a charade. Aziraphale dropped Crowley's hand. 

“Well," he said. “Mission accomplished?"

Crowley flexed his suddenly cold fingers. “Yeah," he said weakly. “We sure fooled them."

The awkward silence stretched out for a moment. The tension had snapped and deflated, the golden magic of the wedding brushed away by the cool evening breeze.

Aziraphale clapped his hands together and asked politely if Crowley would care for some tea, or potentially a nightcap. 

Feeling oddly bereft without the warmth of another body beside his own, Crowley nodded, walking to plop down onto the floral couch in Aziraphale's home. Their home together, now.

It was going to be a long week. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and lovely comments-- you lift my heart!!


	5. Chapter 5

As he sprawled across Aziraphale's couch, watching the last red streaks of sunset fade from the sky, Crowley shifted uncomfortably in his restrictive wedding dress. With a snap of his fingers, he carefully hung the garment in the far back of the upstairs closet and clad himself in a v-neck and his most breathable leather pants, slim-cut and black. He had an image to maintain, even if he felt slightly singed and cracked open by the emotions that poured out unstoppably during the wedding ceremony. He snapped a pair of sunglasses into existence and huddled down into the couch. 

Looking down at his own lanky corporation, he briefly considered changing into a low-cut lingerie nightdress, or possibly nothing at all, but he dismissed the notion just as quickly. The strange, ineffable tension between them during the wedding had melted away as soon as the intoxicating spell of the evening was broken. He was a demon; he would always be a demon. Francis might have agreed to marry Ashtoreth as a favor, but Aziraphale would certainly never agree to marry _ him. _He had to remember that it wasn't real, not for both of them. 

As an immortal demon, he had spent much more time over the years crashing weddings to drink other people's wine and start drama between the bridesmaids than contemplating his own wedding night. Still, he thought, twiddling his champagne flute between his fingers and looking around at the cheerfully homey decor, this was never what he would have pictured. 

Aziraphale was puttering around in the kitchen down the short hallway behind him, chattering on about the wine variety he was selecting and how he thought everyone had enjoyed the ceremony, except for Dowling, of course, who was a no-good, low-life, very mean… meanie. 

“I do apologize for not welcoming you more formally,“ Aziraphale said with a frown as he walked back into the room, startling Crowley out of his thoughts. “I suppose I could… give you the tour? Carry you over the threshold?“ 

“No need,“ said Crowley, feeling oddly sucker-punched at the notion of being carried anywhere, let alone over the threshold of Aziraphale's bedroom. “Just us here. No one to pretend for, remember?“

“Ah, of course. How silly of me," Aziraphale said with a small, sad smile. He sat down in his usual armchair and gestured with the unopened bottle of champagne. “Can I tempt you?"

"Very funny, angel," Crowley sighed. "I'm tired. Long day. Long week, really."

"Perfectly understandable," Aziraphale said, sending the unopened bottle back to the wine rack in the kitchen. "Shall we go to bed, then?"

Crowley stared at him. "To- bed!??" he stammered. 

"Well, to sleep," Aziraphale said. "Whatever you wish to call it."

“You don't sleep."

“I keep up appearances,“ Aziraphale sniffed. “_ You _sleep.“

“Got in the habit," Crowley said. “Not exactly convenient, but… it can be enjoyable. Relaxing."

“Seems such an odd thing," Aziraphale said. "Wasting perfectly good hours of the day to recharge one's brain power. Still, I can enjoy the comforts of a warm bed as well as any human. Shall we?"

Crowley stood up quickly, suddenly self-conscious. He shoved his hands as far into his tiny pockets as they would go, and tried to walk with his usual swaggering confidence as he followed Aziraphale across the room, into the front hallway, and up the narrow stairs. He fought the urge to reach forward for Aziraphale's hand as they walked, longing for the closeness of earlier that evening. 

“I suppose I ought to miracle up a bigger bed for us," Aziraphale said as he finished climbing the stairs and turned to open the first doorway on the left in the upstairs hallway. "My current model was _ not _ intended for two. Any thoughts on the color scheme of the bedspread? It'll have to match the house, of course, and it _ will _still be a four-poster bed if I have any say in it, but we might be able to compromise on the bedding."

Crowley was far too busy processing the words _ bed for us _ to really respond to the question. “A four-poster bed?" he said. "You actually still have one?"

“Well, how else is one supposed to sleep?“ Aziraphale asked. 

"I don't know," Crowley said, flapping his hand dismissively. “I thought… two beds. Y'know. Like married couples in the sitcoms."

Aziraphale scoffed. “Puritanical American nonsense, my dear. Any proper romance novel will tell you that there is only one bed necessary, at least in this part of the world."

“Right," Crowley said. “Right. Okay. Sure. One bed. Yes. Fine."

“There's no need to fuss about it,“ Aziraphale said. “I won't be doing much sleeping.“

“Ngk. What will you be doing?"

“Reading, mostly," Aziraphale hummed. 

“Of course. Of course!" Crowley said. “Why would you be doing anything else, silly me."

Aziraphale remained oblivious to Crowley's steadily blooming blush, standing at the foot of the bed and staring at the cheerful patchwork quilt. The bed shivered, then widened and lengthened itself, maintaining the proper proportions to support a canopy of white fabric hanging down from the posts. Smiling, he walked to the right side of the bed and turned down the covers. 

Crowley warily walked around to the other half of the bed and turned down his own covers. With a thought, he changed into a matching black silk pajama set-- not what he usually wore when sleeping in nanny's room, but a familiar comfort that he felt himself desperately needing at that moment. 

On the other side of the bed, Aziraphale had manually undressed and was rummaging around in a set of drawers, totally unashamed of his nudity. Crowley coughed and looked down at the colorful patchwork bedspread, cheeks flaming. Even though they were only inhabiting human-shaped corporations at the moment, there was something incredibly intimate about being trusted to watch Aziraphale's naked back. 

Cautiously, Crowley slid into the bed, laying stiffly with his hands folded over his stomach. He stared at the canopy, trying to ignore the odd thudding of his heart. He slept regularly nowadays. This was a bed like any other, and he would sleep like any other night. Just because his new fake husband, an angel who he knew better than any other being in the universe, was beside the bed pulling on a set of striped flannel pajamas, didn't mean he had a reason to be panicking (Crowley thought this to himself as he began to panic, very quietly). 

He hadn't considered this aspect of his plan to annoy Dowling to high heaven. He hadn't planned for it to feel so real, either the wedding ceremony or this quiet moment lying in bed. Through their countless charades and assumed personas over the years, Crowley had never wanted to slip into the fantasy so badly and believe his own lies. Aziraphale was so close, walking over to the bed, their bed, and Crowley screwed his eyes shut. It wasn't real. Well, he was really here, though he could scarcely credit it, but the marriage wasn't real. Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that simple fact?

His nighttime ensemble finally complete with a long tasseled cap and quilted red dressing gown, Aziraphale slid under the covers beside Crowley. He hummed and settled back against the pillows, picking up his book and glasses off the nightstand and settling in to read. 

After a few moments, he looked over at Crowley curiously. "Is that how you normally sleep?" he asked. 

Still stiff as a board and terrified to shift his body lest he brush up against Aziraphale's warm leg, Crowley nodded. 

"It's only… you don't look comfortable. Not at all, really," Aziraphale said, putting his book back down on the nightstand. "I'm no expert on such things, of course, but, ah. Perhaps this would- help?"

He reached out a tentative hand to rub across Crowley's closest shoulder. 

The demon melted instantly into the touch, turning towards Aziraphale and curling up until his head was resting next to the angel's hip. Aziraphale began rubbing a slow and steady rhythm across his shoulders, tracing wide circles over rapidly relaxing shoulder muscles. 

"There. That's better," Aziraphale said fondly. 

Crowley hummed, almost involuntarily (if he was physically capable of such a thing and not quite so snake-like, he would have been purring).

"Thank you for today, my dear," Aziraphale said, almost too quietly to be heard. "It really was lovely, whatever the reasons for it."

He reached out to pick up his book with his free hand while still maintaining the hypnotic circles across Crowley's shoulders. "Good night, my dear," he whispered.

Crowley did not answer. He was already asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Comments are love.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly early update this week because I'm getting sick and my day at work tomorrow is gonna be... fun. 
> 
> Also tagging the book because I will be borrowing a few elements of strictly book canon, but ignoring the fact that Ashtoreth had a dog.
> 
> Getting into Aziraphale's head this chapter!

Outside the cottage, the sun was rising orange and warm, illuminating the mist rising from the dewy garden. The autumn chill had not fully settled, allowing the occupants of the main house to cling to the illusion that summer would last forever this time. Birds chirped from the trees, deliberately annoying all the humans who wanted to wake up at a remotely reasonable hour. 

In the tiny upstairs bedroom of the cottage, Aziraphale was sitting up with his legs snuggled into the warmth of the blanket. He was awake despite the early hour because he'd never slept. Although he indulged in many of humanity's other pleasures (more accurately: as many as possible), he'd never quite understood the appeal of sleeping for those who did not need it. The nighttime was quiet and peaceful, an ideal time for exploring corner cafes or reading books in a large armchair by a fire. 

This morning, however, his book was closed and placed on the nightstand, next to a steaming mug of English breakfast tea. He was wholly preoccupied with the warmth of the body curled around his thigh. Crowley was snoring lightly with his nose mashed against Aziraphale's hip, his red hair sticking up in every direction. He had one arm flung across Aziraphale's lap and the other hugging his thigh, and his curled-up legs were doing their best to snake their way around his calf. 

Aziraphale found himself strangely unable to look away. Intellectually, he knew that this was a normal, daily occurrence for many human couples. This simple search for physical comfort didn't necessarily mean anything, like the wedding didn't necessarily mean anything (he'd helped too many reluctant brides and grooms escape their unwanted spouses over the years to fully believe in the institution). Yet that knowledge was not helping him tamp down a warm feeling in his chest when he looked down at Crowley. It felt like divine light, like he was about to rise up into the air with radiant beams streaking across his face and immerse himself in the song of his angelic brethren. 

He winced as his thoughts turned blasphemous and looked nervously up at the ceiling. When planning this particular caper, he'd easily found justifications for his actions: he was fulfilling the conditions of the Arrangement, sharing joy with a human community, and hopefully causing a sinful human to realize the error of his ways and repent. He'd talked himself into believing that everything was above-board and heaven-ordained, but in the soft idyll of this morning, it was impossible to rationalize away the reality of a demon curled around his body, soft and trusting. 

This moment could last forever, he thought, and he'd happily stay in this bed, ignoring the rest of the world until it ended… which might be soon, because the Antichrist was on earth and they were only in this cottage in the first place because they were trying to raise him into a young man who wouldn't want to obliterate the world. Oh dear. Oh, this simply wouldn't do. 

Taking a deep breath, Aziraphale slowly extracted his limbs from Crowley's grasp. He sat up, slid his feet into the fuzzy slippers on the floor, and stood up as quietly as possible, looking back at Crowley to ensure he wouldn't wake. The demon frowned and stretched his arm out, seeking warmth he would not find. Aziraphale shuffled over to the wardrobe to dress in his standard baggy gardener clothes, then carried his miraculously still-steaming mug of tea downstairs to the kitchen. 

It was better this way, he reasoned, as he selected his breakfast pastries. Crowley would have been embarrassed when he awoke, and Aziraphale could not have tolerated seeing a look of revulsion on his face as he pulled himself away. Besides, he had gardening things to do, like… like… well, whatever gardeners did. Watering, perhaps. He still hadn't quite gotten the hang of anything else, although he'd occasionally clip some hedges and miracle them into fancy shapes when he was bored (and, if you asked Crowley, he hadn't gotten the hang of watering yet either). 

He would have to be more on his guard, or this situation would quickly become intolerable for the both of them. Heaven might allow him a loose leash, but the morning had shown him that this kerfluffle could be more dangerous than he had previously realized for the both of them. 

_ We're immortal enemies forced together by a desperate situation, _he thought, and used those words to drown out the insidious whispers telling him that he wanted Crowley curled around him every morning, no matter the circumstances or the cost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mention they're both idiots?
> 
> Next chapter... Back to work as usual. Or is it?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this fic would have a Wednesday/Sunday update schedule, but I was young and foolish then. Let's just say it will be updated regularly and go from there.

Before he was fully awake, Crowley's tongue flicked out to taste the air. Something was wrong. Confused, he reached his hand out to find cool sheets, but not the familiar luxurious texture of the expensive black sheets on nanny's bed on the third floor. He forced his eyes open. 

Oh. Right. 

The hazy memories of the wedding filtered back through his consciousness, oozing like warm syrup. Satan. They'd held each other close, smashed cake in each other's faces, and he'd fallen asleep half-drunk and curled against Aziraphale's side. The recollections of yesterday felt unreal, like the memories belonged to someone else, especially as he was waking up alone in a cold bed. In _Aziraphale's_ bed. 

Well, he supposed the memories did belong to someone else, in a certain sense. Lilith Crawford Ashtoreth had gotten married yesterday. Anthony J. Crowley had not. 

He lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling with one hand clenched in his wild tangle of long hair. The memories filtered through, and he took a deep breath as he remembered their vows. Christ- er, Antichrist, the look in Aziraphale's eyes when they'd said _ I do _ would never leave him. 

Rolling his head to the side, he caught a glimpse of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table. It was almost nine o'clock. Crowley sat bolt upright, clumsily kicking away the sheets and scrambling his way across the floor and down the stairs. He should have been at work waking Warlock an hour ago. 

“Crowley?" Aziraphale called from the kitchen once he reached the first floor. “Oh, good, you're up. Would you care for breakfast?"

“Not now, angel," Crowley said, using a series of miracles to change his pajamas into a smart black skirt suit, tame his hair, and apply pristine red lipstick. “Have to run."

“What? Where are you going?"

“Work waits for no demon," Crowley said, flashing Aziraphale a grin as he opened the door. “See you later!"

"But-" Aziraphale started as Crowley closed the door. "I made cocoa," he muttered sadly. 

Crowley strode down the gravel path that led away from the gardener's cottage, wincing his way until he remembered to miracle himself up some shoes. Looking up, he saw the round reflections of the security officer's binoculars on the edge of the roof. He felt the hunger and curiosity of the human on the roof and shivered in revulsion at the feeling of being voyeuristically observed. 

He'd always hated humans really looking at him, preferring to work unseen on the edge of the human society to influence events. Evoking admiration, attraction, and envy was part of the job, but being _ observed _ made his skin crawl, and that was nothing in comparison with being _ discussed. _ The rumor mill would occupy itself with the wedding for at least a month, and nanny arriving late on the first day after the wedding would only fan the flames. 

She hurried up the concrete steps of the staff entrance at the back of the house, walked past the kitchen, and climbed the narrow stone spiral staircase up to the second floor. The stairs led to a door which blended seamlessly into the wood paneling lining the main hallway of the second floor, which was lined with rich carpeting and old portraits of stuffy ancestors of the previous owners of the house. The decor suggested ancient grandeur without offering a hint of warmth or personality. 

Nanny strode down the hallway, every sound she made muffled by the thick carpet and paneled walls. She paused outside Warlock's door to straighten her jacket and flick her hair into place one more time. Satisfied, she turned the doorknob of Warlock's room and stepped inside, only to stop short at the sight of Harriet Dowling sitting on the floor next to her son, who was busy assembling a misshapen and multicolored Lego structure. 

Warlock looked up and broke into a wide, toothless grin. “Nanny!" he said. 

“Ashtoreth!" Harriet Dowling said directly after her son's exclamation. “What on earth are you doing here?"

Ashtoreth paused, hand still resting on the doorknob. “I apologize for my tardiness, but I do believe I am still employed as your nanny," she said in her low Scottish brogue. 

“Yes, of course, it's only- we thought you two lovebirds would be on your honeymoon!“ Harriet said, standing up. 

"Oh, well," Ashtoreth said, imagining crayon marks on the walls and sudden world-ending shifts in Warlock's personality caused by her absence. “Someone must care for the wee one. I wouldn't want to trouble you."

“That's so sweet of you," Harriet said. “But it's absolutely no problem at all."

“Even so, we've nothing planned, I'm afraid," Ashtoreth said. “Perhaps next year. Now. Would you prefer to dress him yourself, or would you allow me to step in?"

Harriet looked down at Warlock in surprise, as though she was just noticing his ninja turtles pajamas for the first time. “Oh," she said, visibly wavering for a moment. Ashtoreth took a small step forward into the room, which was already littered with toys and blankets thrown off the unmade bed. She felt the control of the situation brush against her fingertips, but the opportunity to seize it fell away as Harriet straightened up and squared her shoulders. 

“I can do it," Harriet declared, before softening and smiling. “I insist. Besides, a week of relaxation and, uh, connection with your husband? That's simply priceless."

“I beg your pardon?"

“Oh, you know what I mean," Harriet said with a significant glance down at a curious Warlock, staring up at the pair of them with wide eyes. 

“I see," Ashtoreth said. “Well, in that case, I suppose I ought to consult with Azira- uh, my husband. Yes. My… husband."

Harriet beamed at nanny, who still stood wrong-footed in the doorway of Warlock's room. “Strange to say it out loud, huh?" she said. “It was for me. You'll get used to it. Speaking of which, we should really go talk to Thaddeus, I'm sure he'll approve some time off for you. Oh! We could help with travel arrangements, Thaddeus has a wonderful contact in London."

“That's really not necessary," said Ashtoreth quickly. 

“Nonsense," Harriet said. “We're both thrilled for you, I'm sure he'd want to help."

“I doubt that," Ashtoreth muttered. 

“Hmm?"

“Nothing," Ashtoreth said. “Just wondering who will look after the little one. If we both go speak to your husband, that is. Perhaps it would be best if you went ahead."

“One of the guards will take care of him," Harriet said, looking towards the open door. “Jason!" she called. 

A man in a dark suit, whose name was presumably Jason, stepped into the room and took up a watchful position against the wall (Crowley wouldn't have been able to differentiate him from the other security staff if commanded by God Herself, but then again, he would have told God to shove it whether he was capable of completing the task or not). 

With an expectant look at Ashtoreth, the look of easy command from a woman who has been readily obeyed her entire life, Harriet walked to the door. Ashtoreth wavered for a moment before turning to follow her. It would seem there was no escaping this slow-moving freight train, even as it chugged towards the edge of a cliff. 

“No!! Don't!" Warlock cried. “Don't go!"

Harriet turned, one hand on the doorframe, to look back at her son. “I'll be right back," she soothed. 

“No!" Warlock yelled, his eyes welling with tears that threatened to spill over his round cheeks. “Nanny, don't go! I don't _ like _ the glasses man," he said. 

“That nice man's name is Jason," corrected Harriet, with an apologetic glance in the direction of the impassive man standing against the far wall with his hands folded in front of him. 

“I don't _ like _Jason!!" Warlock said. 

“Now, now. Let's not be impolite. Your mother will return shortly," Ashtoreth said, although there was a strange lurch in her stomach at the thought that Warlock cared more about her presence than the presence of his own mother. 

Still feeling out-of-step, but compelled by social convention and necessity of keeping her job, Nanny followed slightly behind Harriet as she strode out into the hall and down the grand curve of the front hall staircase. Ashtoreth walked gingerly, avoiding the gleaming curved wooden railing. She was unused to using the main pathways of the house instead of the hidden back passageways for maids and maintenance, and felt oddly exposed in the formal foyer. 

At the foot of the stairs, they turned down the main hallway, walking the familiar pathway to Dowling's corner office that had led to this mess in the first place. The hallway seemed to stretch before her eyes, growing longer, narrower, and darker. Ashtoreth briefly marveled at the speed of her own heartbeat as they drew step by step closer to the office, before she internally bristled. She was _ not _nervous, and would not allow one human to intimidate her. She had faced princes and dukes of hell, for Satan's sake. One perverted human drunk on his own exploitative power? Pah. 

They reached the heavy wooden door. Harriet knocked softly, leaning in to listen for her husband's assent before entering. 

“Uh… just a minute!!" Dowling called from inside the office (the intelligence briefs he was reading didn't exist according to any official record, but that's none of your business). 

They stood suspended in the hallway for a moment, waiting. Inside the office, drawers were opened and shut. They waited. Dowling swore as the large Yale class ring on his right hand caught on the edge of a desk drawer. 

“Come in!" Dowling yelled, finally. Harriet pushed the door open and walked into the room with a soft smile that didn't reach her eyes. 

“Ah, hello darling," Thaddeus said, leaning back in his office chair. “What can I do you for?"

“I was just up in Warlock's room," Harriet said, subtly ushering Ashtoreth forward, “when Nanny walked in. The day after her wedding!"

“I see." Thaddeus said. “And?"

Harriet let out a short sigh of exasperation. “The _ day after her wedding, _Thaddeus. Seriously."

Dowling raised his arm to gesture vaguely up and down Nanny's silent form, his eyebrows drawing together. “This woman was hired to provide a service. She is completing her assigned task. Why should her wedding change anything?"

“Don't you think they should be on their honeymoon?"

Dowling frowned, looking to Ashtoreth for the first time as if he had only just realized she was capable of independent planning separate from his wishes. “Are you going on a honeymoon?" he asked. 

“No," Ashtoreth said. “No, things came together rather quickly, but I'm afraid we didn't plan a trip."

“Yes, you certainly seemed like you were in a hurry to get hitched," said Thaddeus with a chuckle. "Eager, even."

Ashtoreth held her tongue, which was dangerously close to hissing. Her sunglasses became steadily more opaque as the color of her eyes expanded to completely obscure the sclera. 

“Darling," said Harriet. “Maybe we should reward our employees for their _ very _ loyal service by giving them some time to celebrate?"

“That's really not necessary," Ashtoreth added, but something had already shifted in Dowling's face. He looked like he was chewing over an idea and liking it steadily more as he continued thinking about it. Ashtoreth, in the meantime, felt her dread slowly increase as he mulled. 

“You know, that's not a bad idea," he said. “Get away from the house for a bit." 

“Again, although I appreciate the gesture, that's really not-" Ashtoreth said. 

“Yeah, sure. Take the week," Dowling said, talking over her. “Hell, take today. Harriet will take care of Warlock, won't you, honey?"

Harriet nodded, pleased. Ashtoreth wasn't so sure he'd really given in-- at least, not in the manner that Harriet believed he had. Thaddeus Dowling had a pernicious persistence when provoked, and he was very used to getting his way. 

“Wear each other out," Dowling said. “Work out all that _ tension_, if you know what I mean."

“Thaddeus!" Harriet chastised half-heartedly. 

“Sorry, sorry," Thaddeus said, leering at Ashtoreth in a manner that made it perfectly clear that he was not sorry at all. “Just a joke."

Ashtoreth very diplomatically resisted the urge to strangle the man. 

“Sebastian could help with the bookings, don't you think?“ Harriet said. “He's so good with last minute reservations."

“Sure," Thaddeus said. “As you said, my dear, loyal service should be rewarded. Just as disloyalty should be met with punishment."

Ashtoreth felt a chill run down her spine. She'd heard that tone of entitlement and vengeful anger before, in a certain angel leading a rebellion against the Almighty.

“Yes, of course,“ Harriet agrees, nonplussed by the non-sequitur. “How about Italy? Northern Italy's lovely this time of year. Or the Amalfi coast?"

“Nothing too extravagant, please," Ashtoreth said. “It's really not worth the trouble."

“It's your honeymoon! Of course it's worth the trouble," Harriet said. Her honeymoon had been the last time she truly enjoyed the presence of her husband, and she clung to those memories through late-night calls and distracted dinners and long absences when he continually prioritized his career over his family. 

“The South Downs are lovely this time of year," Ashtoreth ventured, still trying in vain to wriggle her way out of the situation. 

“No," Thaddeus said. “No, you should really get away. Go to the continent. Or maybe something further afield? South Africa? Japan?"

“Italy sounds lovely," Ashtoreth said hastily, trying to stop that train of thought in its tracks. They had to stay as close as possible to England. The world depended on it. 

“Glad you think so,“ Thaddeus said. “I'll give Sebastian a call."

He pulled out his large cell phone from his inner suit pocket, frowned down at the lock screen, then paused and looked up at the two women standing in his office. “Is that all?" he asked. 

“Yes… yes, that's all," Harriet said. “We'll just be going, then. I'll see you at dinner, darling?"

“Yeah, dinner," Thaddeus said, distracted by the phone. Ashtoreth and Harriet half-walked, half-backed out of the room, in an oddly formal and deferential exit. 

"Well," Harriet said, turning to Ashtoreth after quietly closing the door, "There you have it."

Ashtoreth, unable to muster any words, smiled weakly. 

"Go ahead and take the rest of the day off," Harriet said. "I'll look after Warlock."

Ashtoreth nodded, readjusted her sunglasses to fit tightly against her face, and walked away.

Crowley walked out the front door of the house in a daze, mind whirring with all the potential ways that Dowling could negatively affect Warlock's development and doom the world to fiery destruction. He needed to be there. Not because he couldn't surrender control, not because his parents didn't know how to care for the child properly no matter how much they loved him, and certainly, certainly not because he cared for the boy a great deal. No, he needed to be there to save the world, and only to save the world. 

His feet set him on the path to the gardener's cottage. He could feel the close scrutiny of the binoculars-wielding human on the roof of the house, but simply ignored it. Dowling had to be plotting something. They'd never so much as been permitted to take the day off before, keeping to their times and their hours, at least as far back as anyone had records (Brother Francis submitted a timesheet with a tenuous relationship to reality, which is to say the working hours were almost wholly fabricated. No one noticed). 

They'd embarrassed Thaddeus Dowling, deliberately and publicly. Aziraphale might believe that they'd taught the man a lesson, but Crowley should have known better than to expect life would continue on as normal, without reprisals. Humans, especially those in power, had a remarkable talent for petty, vindictive revenge. Well, if Dowling wanted a fight, he'd find one. He wouldn't be able to get rid of them that easily, not when the stakes were so high. 

Crowley reached the cottage and found Aziraphale in the front garden, staring blankly at a fading rose bush with clippers in his hands. 

“Just clip the dead blooms to start," he said without missing a step up the path. 

“Oh!! Crowley!" Aziraphale said brightly. "You've returned rather earlier than I expected."

Crowley simply shook his head, pushing forward into the house and angrily ripping nanny's ensemble from his body. Aziraphale followed him into the house, trailing dirt on his shoes and absent-mindedly holding a pair of clippers in his left hand. 

“Crowley, what on earth happened?" Aziraphale said, reaching out to lightly touch the demon's shoulder. Crowley winced, curling in on himself as he spun to face Aziraphale, who snatched back his hesitant hand and waited for answers. 

“Pack your bags, _ sweetheart,_" Crowley said, voice more tired than venomous. “We're going on vacation."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Workplace gender and power dynamics??? In my fanfiction??????????
> 
> Anyway, coming next, we return to our regularly scheduled fluffy pining, with: the honeymoon chapter!! Aka how many stupid romantic tropes can I fit into one chapter? The answer may surprise you!
> 
> (I am definitely taking suggestions for the honeymoon, so let me know if there's anything you'd like to see :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I promised the honeymoon, but Nanny couldn't leave without saying goodbye to Warlock first. Honeymoon hopefully this weekend, maybe a little longer delay. I want to get that chapter right.

Crowley and Aziraphale sat at the round kitchen table in the cottage, their matching cups of cocoa illuminated by the bright morning sunlight filtered through the lacy floral-patterned curtains. The kitchen at the back of the house was small but cheerful, with yellow walls and old whitewashed cabinets. Crowley's mood, however, was as dark as his clothing. 

Picking up his mug and setting it down again without taking a sip, Crowley fidgeted restlessly as he glared out the window at the finches fluttering around the bird feeder hung on a tree behind the house. As he watched, the shadow of a hawk passed over the yard, and the songbirds dispersed with panicked wingbeats and warning calls. 

"Really, my dear," Aziraphale said, resting his hand on the table as if he desperately wanted to lean over and take Crowley's hand, but couldn't quite bring himself to bridge the gap. 

"Nothing to do with me," Crowley said. The fingers of his left hand traced patterns across the tabletop. His thin gold wedding band with a string of small embedded rubies clicked against the wood. 

Aziraphale waited a patient moment, sipping his cocoa. The hawk flew away; a brave house sparrow returned to the feeder. 

"It might help if you would tell me what's wrong," Aziraphale said. 

Crowley shook his head. He pulled his sunglasses off his face and threw them onto the table. "The Dowlings are sending us on a honeymoon," Crowley said. "To Italy."

"Oh my!" Aziraphale said. "That's very kind of them."

"You don't understand, angel."

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. "What, precisely, am I failing to understand?"

"He's not doing it out of… kindness, or generosity," Crowley said, gesturing with his arms as he searched for the right words. "He's up to something."

"He hasn't made any more comments, has he? Inappropriate ones?" Aziraphale asked sharply. 

"No. Not that." Crowley said. "But… scheming has a scent. I'd know. He's… up to something."

"Really, my dear, I think you're overthinking this," Aziraphale said. "He's likely trying to make amends for his earlier actions, having seen the error of his ways."

Crowley scoffed. He redirected his attention out the window. 

"Well, what do you propose we do about it?" Aziraphale asked. 

Crowley shook his head. "I'm not going. Not leaving England. Can't just leave for a week when we're raising the bloody Antichrist. What if something happened? Who's gonna step in if reality gets all… wonky?"

"I appreciate your concern for young Warlock," Aziraphale said. "I care for the boy as well. But if Dowling is really out to get you, as you say, then perhaps it would be best to take some time off? Let all parties involved… cool down?"

"Absolutely not," Crowley growled. "He'll do something. Fire us. Call us unreliable. You know the type, angel. Politicians. Bureaucrats. They're slippery as… as… as a greased hog."

"That's a phrase I haven't heard in quite some time," Aziraphale said mildly. 

"Not the point," Crowley said. "Dowling belongs to my side, is what I'm saying. I don't trust him. I'm not leaving."

Aziraphale sighed. "If you insist," he said. "It's only…"

"What?"

"It's been quite a while since I… since _ we _ had a break," Aziraphale said, nearly batting his eyelashes at Crowley in his effort to look innocent. "Gardening requires a certain amount of effort, you know."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Like you've ever actually done any gardening."

"I beg your pardon, I've kept all the plants alive and blooming beautifully, if I do say so myself."

"With blatant misuse of miracles!" Crowley said. 

"In any case," Aziraphale said. "Perhaps we ought to take advantage of the opportunity presented to us."

"Out of the question," Crowley said. "We'll just… miracle it away. Make them forget, or make them think we've already gone."

"But neither of us have taken a proper vacation since we started watching over Warlock," Aziraphale said. "A trip to Italy would be so _ invigorating. _The food alone… heavenly. And the wine! Oh, the wine. My word."

Aziraphale's eyes slid shut in rapturous recollection of pasta dinners past and Italian grape vines twisting towards clear sunlight. A jibe about _ heavenly _food not being much of a temptation died on Crowley's tongue and the tips of his ears turned pink. 

"I can recall a particular vineyard in Tuscany that made divine apricot wine," Aziraphale continued, the tone of his voice bordering on orgasmic. "That was surely the closest human approximation of ambrosia. My word, the floral notes alone… perhaps it's still in production."

"Maybe…" Crowley said. "Well. Er. If it's just for a week..."

"Just for a week," Aziraphale confirmed, beaming at him. 

"And we could, er, strategize. Reassess. You know," Crowley said. 

"But of course," Aziraphale said. "It's entirely practical to take some time away. Especially when the pasta is so scrumptious. I had one of the first pizzas ever created, you know. The original flatbread variety, of course. My word. The Italians certainly have had their moments."

"That they have," Crowley agreed. "But no Rome. The Vatican gives me hives."

"Perfectly alright with me," Aziraphale said. "Although… do you remember those oysters?"

"That restaurant burned down 1800 years ago, angel," Crowley said. 

"Oh, right," Aziraphale said sadly. 

After a moment of mourning for culinary delights lost to time, Aziraphale turned contemplative. "If we're going, as humans, we ought to book our passage, I suppose?"

"Book our passage? We're not taking a steamship," Crowley said. "Anyway, no. The Dowlings insisted on a travel agent."

"Harriet too?"

"Harriet especially," Crowley said. "She's rich and American. Can't recognize when she's overstepping unless she smacks her nose into a boundary." 

"Hmm," Aziraphale said. "Then I suppose we'd better pack. Oh, I do love an adventure! It's been far too long since we traveled."

"Whatever you say, angel," Crowley said. "Whatever you say."

They spent most of the day orbiting around each other in the small space of the cottage, occasionally catching each other's eyes but always turning away after a brief moment. Through centuries of secret meetings and working in tandem or at cross-purposes, they'd become something very close to friends, but they were not the type of friends who _hung out_, as the humans say these days. They dined, on occasion, but that was mostly business. Spending the day together as they went through their separate routines was a novelty, and strangely intimate. 

Aziraphale refilled the bird feeder while Crowley took care of the neglected plants on the kitchen windowsill. Crowley sorted his vinyl collection into crates tucked into a new shelf along the baseboard of the living room while Aziraphale reread _ Wuthering Heights _ in the overstuffed armchair. They brushed up against each other in the narrow hallway between the kitchen and the front room as Aziraphale went to refill his cocoa and Crowley skulked from window to window, watching Jason the security officer chase after Warlock through the garden. 

The quiet was interrupted later that afternoon when the corded white landline phone mounted on the wall in Aziraphale's living room rang. The caller was Sebastian, travel agent extraordinaire, who was _ so thrilled _ to be working with them to provide a _ special experience _for their honeymoon. 

Sebastian, from his glass-paneled office in London, had booked them a romantic three-city tour of Italy: Verona, Venice, and Rome, cities selected for their historical and literary significance, because he knew that middle-aged couples just _ loved _that sort of thing (Crowley resented being called middle-aged. He hadn't even liked the Middle Ages. He was perfectly ancient, thank you, older than any human civilization, and he didn't need a shoe-shined slick-ass pencil-pusher to patronize him- "Hush, dear," Aziraphale said, taking notes). 

Sebastian reassured them that he'd booked sensible, mid-range hotels, rapid-fire listing the details of each lodging. He proceeded to tell them about how well-connected he was in each of those Italian cities, and hint at the romantic adventure that awaited them. He then tried to get them to pay for various expensive add-ons from luxury airplane neck pillows to moonlight serenades by down-on-their-luck opera singers, until Aziraphale gently steered him back to the topic of trip logistics.

They would fly into Verona, where a driver named Vincenzo would meet them and take them to the hotel. They weren't to worry about a _ thing _(this, of course, intensely worried Aziraphale). Vincenzo would continue to escort them as necessary, to enforce a high standard of romance and fun. 

"Are you sure that's really necessary?" Aziraphale asked. "I assure you, we're quite competent travelers."

"Trust me," Sebastian said. "You _ don't _want to cancel Vincenzo."

"Why not?"

"Because…" Sebastian said. "Look, just _ trust _ me. It would be more trouble than it's worth."

"I can't say I like the sound of that," Aziraphale said. "No, we'll be perfectly fine on our own. _ Molto bene." _

"Look," Sebastian said, the false cheer dropping from his voice. "Let's just say Vincenzo has a cousin, and it just so happens that I owe this cousin a favor. Now, I can either pay Vincenzo to skip town for a week, or Vincenzo can end up at the bottom of the Bay of Naples. Your choice."

"My word," Aziraphale said. "Oh, all right."

"Great!" Sebastian said. "Loved talking to you. Love your love. Adorable, still searching at your age. Goes to show you never know!! Anyway, gotta dash. Have a great trip. Your flight leaves tomorrow morning at 10 am, don't miss it. Don't call me!" 

"I'm sorry?" Aziraphale said. 

"Oh, one more thing," Sebastian said. "Whatever you do, don't ask Vinny what happened to his left thumb. He doesn't like to talk about it. Traumatic incident with the mafia. Kidding. Haha. But, no, seriously. Don't ask him about it."

With that, Sebastian abruptly ended the phone call. 

Aziraphale and Crowley looked at one another. 

"Sounds like the restful break you wanted," Crowley said acerbically. 

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Aziraphale said, his words undermined by the note of uncertainty in his voice. 

The strange atmosphere of early afternoon continued into the evening as they ate a light supper at the kitchen table. Crowley kept glancing away, lost in thought rather than his usual intense observation of Aziraphale's eating habits. Aziraphale tried not to be put off by it, but the cheese really wasn't as flavorful as he'd hoped, and certainly didn't complement the butternut squash soup as promised. As soon as he finished eating, Crowley pushed away from the table, muttering something about wanting to check on Warlock. 

Nanny returned to the main house for the second time that day, unobserved, because she was a lady of mystery and could sneak if she damn well pleased (she did well please, and she was indeed damned). Once more, she crept past the kitchens and climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor, slipping down the hallway into Warlock's bedroom. 

The boy sat up as she entered the room, clutching the stuffed rabbit that brother Francis had gifted him in an effort to encourage affection for all small woodland creatures (to Aziraphale's great disappointment, this stuffed animal only gave Warlock unrealistic expectations for living rabbits, who kept running away when he tried to hug them). 

"Nanny?" Warlock called, drawing his knees up to his chest. 

"Yes, it's me," Ashtoreth said, gently shutting the door behind her. The last rays of the setting sun flashed off her sunglasses and made her prim curls shine blood-red. 

"Nanny! You came back!" Warlock exclaimed happily. "Will you sing my song? Mommy did a song, but she didn't do it right."

"Of course I came back," Ashtoreth said. "And no, not tonight, dear. There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"What?" Warlock asked, curling Mr. Bunny tighter against his small chest. 

Nanny walked across to the bed and gently sat down on the edge, leaning forward to smooth a hand across Warlock's forehead. "Nothing bad, sweet," she soothed. "It's only…you know how I've always encouraged you to dominate the wills of your fellow humans? Tempt them into evil?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, how would you like to practice on your mother?"

Warlock frowned. "On mommy?"

"Yes, on your mother," Nanny said. "You see, I'll be gone for a little while. I'm going on a special vacation."

"A honey spoon?"

"Honeymoon, dear," Nanny said, a smile winking in the corner of her eyes. "And yes. So you'll be spending a lot of time with your mother, just for a little while."

Warlock pouted. "But mommy doesn't let me do _ anything _fun," he said. "Can I come with you?"

"I know you'd like to come," Nanny said. "But you must stay here. Remember what I told you, and practice bending others to your infernal will."

Warlock nodded solemnly, his eyes wide. 

"But," Nanny said, slowly. "You must also, just this once, you mind, listen to Brother Francis, and don't be too naughty."

Warlock looked up at Nanny, curious. "You said I should listen to you," he said. "You said it a lot. You said _ don't _ listen to Brother Francis."

"Well," Nanny said. "He is my husband, now. He had at least one good idea, clearly."

Warlock, instead of trying to understand the silly logic of adults, snuggled back into his pillows. "Mm-hmm," he said. "Cuz he loves you."

Nanny, who always had an answer, remained quiet for a strangely long amount of time. Warlock's eyelids drooped. The room was dark and warm, his mommy had tried to sing him songs, and nanny was there to wish him good night. He could fall asleep now. 

"Nanny?" he said. 

"Hmm?"

“I'll miss you," he said. "You 'n Francey."

"Thank you, dear. I'll tell him."

"Mmmkay," Warlock said, yawning. "G'night."

"Good night," Ashtoreth whispered, drawing the covers up to his chest. "Sleep tight. Don't let the hellhounds bite. The legions of the damned await you."

Warlock snuggled Mr. Bunny closer, and nanny flipped the lights off and slipped away, her departure as unseen as her arrival. 

The sun had fully set by the time Crowley returned to the cottage, feeling oddly wrung-out. The day had not gone according to plan, in any respect. He walked up the stairs, following the sounds of Aziraphale muttering to himself. 

In the upstairs bedroom, Aziraphale's entire wardrobe seemed to have exploded onto their bed, with the nucleus of the disaster focused on an old-fashioned travel trunk at Aziraphale's feet. Crowley stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the tornado-storm, before Aziraphale looked up and noticed him. 

"Oh! Crowley! Excellent timing," Aziraphale said, picking up a selection of three bow ties in slightly different patterns of tartan. "Thoughts?"

Crowley squinted. "All the same to me," he said. 

"Well, that's not very helpful," Aziraphale said. 

"That one," Crowley said, without pointing. Aziraphale pouted at him. "Anyway. I wanted to talk to you." 

"You seem to have succeeded," Aziraphale said dryly, selecting the middle of the three bow ties from the group and gently tucking it into his trunk. "How was Warlock?"

"Fine," Crowley said. "I told him to crush all dominions of beast and man under his heel. Oh, and he said he'll miss you."

Aziraphale smiled as he sorted through a stack of pants. "That's lovely to hear," he said. 

"I wanted to say- I don't like the idea of us having a driver," Crowley said. "A _ human _driver. Feels like they're spying on us. Gets me all squirmy."

"I thought you appreciated a bit of good espionage?" Aziraphale said, picking up two nearly identical pairs of socks and closely inspecting the stitching. 

"Yeah, when _ I'm _the one doing the spying," Crowley said. "This is all backwards. Topsy-turvy. Whichever."

"Mmm," Aziraphale said, giving up and throwing both sets of socks in his trunk. "Ah, blast, this is impossible. Have you packed?"

"No need," Crowley said, grinning. "Demon. I'll just miracle up anything I need."

Aziraphale looked up sharply. "Crowley!" he said. "We're supposed to be flying under the radar!"

"Finally picking up on modern technology, are we?" Crowley asked, leaning against the bedpost and surveying Aziraphale's disaster. 

"I'm perfectly serious. I don't want heaven or hell looking into this," Aziraphale said. "How would I ever explain it? 'My apologies, Sandalphon, but I thought I'd take a vacation from my angelic duties to vacation in Italy with my new husband, who happens to be a demon?' It doesn't bear considering."

"No," he continued, frowning down at his half-full trunk. "It's best if neither of us perform any miracles. Promise me, Crowley. Promise me you won't."

"Ergh," Crowley said. "Fine. No miracles."

"Unless absolutely necessary," Aziraphale amended. "And we'll have to stay in character for the whole trip, especially if they're sending along a guide."

"You really want to pretend to be human honeymooners?" Crowley asked incredulously. "For a whole _ week?" _

"Of course," Aziraphale said. "After all, our alter egos are celebrating their wedding, even if we are not."

"You do realize this will involve a certain level of… romance, right?" Crowley asked. 

"Well. Needs must," said Aziraphale, averting his gaze. 

"Ngk. Right," Crowley said, as his elbow slipped off the bedpost. Catching himself, he jerked upright, strung as tight as a piano wire. "I'll just go… pack, then."

"Yes, you'd better."

"Aziraphale?" Crowley asked. 

"Yes?"

"What do nannies wear on vacation?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and kudos make my day <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this! I've been working crazy hours, six days a week. This chapter is extra long as compensation. 
> 
> Also, Crowley and Aziraphale are disguised as Nanny and Gardener in this chapter, but I'm using their names because they're primarily interacting with each other. Just keep that in mind when visualizing. 
> 
> Note: I definitely trade in some Italian stereotypes here, my apologies to Italy for any exaggeration. However, I have visited all the cities I'm describing. 

** _Verona_ **

The Bentley pulled through the security checkpoint at the edge of the estate early the next morning. Crowley drove, sensible block heels revving against the gas pedal. Aziraphale watched the trees of the estate and the stately house slip away through the morning mist as the car picked up speed. Stefano, already up and working on some pastry dough, stood on the stoop of the back entrance and waved them goodbye as he sheltered from the drizzle under the eaves of the house and smoked. 

Aziraphale spent the ride to the airport pouring over wildly outdated maps of the three cities on their itinerary, trying to remember all the restaurants, wine cellars, museums, libraries, and vineyards he'd visited over the past decades and centuries. He wasn't holding out much hope that Cassius would still have his bread stall open on the Roman forum. 

In the driver's seat, Crowley adjusted his new hat with a wide brim for sun protection. For Ashtoreth's honeymoon ensemble, he'd chosen looks that screamed "librarian trying to cut loose!!": flowing blouses over dark denim, tapered calf-length dresses in muted patterns, belted culottes, and one smart pantsuit for a formal dinner. For Nanny, the looks were downright daring. Her collarbones, on more than one occasion, would be exposed! (Not to mention the ankles, unsheathed by hose!!) 

Aziraphale, on the other hand, had panicked about his already-packed trunk in the middle of the night, waking Crowley to ask him whether he thought his meticulously curated clothing selections would blow his cover. Crowley grumbled out an answer that was not comprehensible as any human, angelic, or demonic language. Left to his own devices, Aziraphale had unpacked the entire trunk, consulted his library, then miracled himself a new travel wardrobe: khakis and Hawaiian shirts, linen suits, and board shorts. 

He was currently clad in a heinous leaf-patterned Hawaiian shirt and khakis, looking for all the world like half of a set of gay fathers: young enough to truly enjoy travel but without any sense of shame in public. Crowley kept glaring at the shirt out of the corner of his eye, trying to convince the pattern to change even as he barreled down the street at ninety miles per hour. The shoulders began smoking slightly before Aziraphale gave him a disapproving look over his reading glasses. 

They reached the airport in record time and with minimal casualties. Pulling the Bentley into a loading zone, Crowley slid his way in between a waiting taxi and an unloading family of four, pulling tight against the curb. He then killed the engine and stepped out of the car, opening the boot to fetch their luggage. 

Aziraphale tried at least seven different ways to refold the map in his hands, opening and closing it like a paper accordion, before he succeeded in snapping it shut. He stepped out of the car and watched Crowley struggle to yank Aziraphale's massive trunk out of the back. 

"Aren't you going to park?" he asked. 

"Just did," Crowley said. "Satan, angel, did you pack the whole _ house?" _

"I didn't want to forget anything!" Aziraphale whinged, closing his car door and walking around behind the car to help Crowley yank his trunk out onto the ground. "You know you can't leave the car here," he said. 

"Why not?" 

"There, on the sign!" Aziraphale said, pointing incredulously. "We're in a loading zone!"

"Human signs say all sorts of things, angel," Crowley said. "It'll be here when we come back." He raised his voice, glaring at the bustling airplane terminal. "And there better not be a _ scratch _on it!"

"No miracles!" Aziraphale said. "We agreed."

"Yeah, but we're not even on the flight yet," Crowley said. "Doesn't count yet."

The baggage attendant at the check-in desk was very surprised that Aziraphale's massive trunk stayed under the weight limit for normal checked baggage, and even more surprised to find herself checking the baggage for no additional charge. Still more surprised were the workers at the airport restaurants who found themselves unexpectedly preparing and serving decent food. 

("I thought you said no miracles?" Crowley asked. 

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," Aziraphale answered.)

During the flight, Crowley jammed his spindly legs up against the seat in front of him, crossed his arms across his chest, and screwed his eyes tightly shut. If he had to be stuck in a metal tube with humans for several hours, he was, at the very least, going to get a decent nap out of it. 

Aziraphale coughed and elbowed him, conspicuously holding up a gardening magazine. "We're under cover!!" he hissed, eyebrows raised as he surveyed Crowley's posture. 

"Ugh," Crowley said, sitting up, crossing his legs at the ankle, and resting his head on Aziraphale's shoulder. "Better?"

"F-fine," Aziraphale said. 

"Mmmm," Crowley said, snuggling in further. Aziraphale drew in a sharp breath, then released it slowly. He looked down at Crowley: the demon was already asleep. 

Aziraphale smiled despite himself, and cracked open his book, cleverly disguised by the gardening magazine. 

Crowley remained determinedly asleep, even during drink service when Aziraphale told the flight attendant that they were on their honeymoon, also telling her very insistently that he was a gardener and his wife was a nanny (so insistently, in fact, that she immediately knew he was lying). 

The flight attendant, a bright-eyed Italian woman in her mid-50s, dutifully cooed over what an adorable couple they made, and kept winking at Aziraphale whenever they passed by, trying to calculate the likelihood that they were actually smugglers or secret agents in her head. She eventually concluded, as she watched the red-headed woman drool on the blond man's shoulder, that they must really be in love, and might simply be strange (the real explanation, that they were an angel and demon temporarily diverted from their quest to avert the apocalypse, never crossed her mind). 

After a few brief hours, the plane landed miraculously smoothly in Verona, impressing even the pilots themselves. Crowley blinked awake and jerked his head off of Aziraphale's shoulder, who very graciously pretended that Crowley hadn't done anything out of the ordinary. He wiped the corner of his mouth, stretched, and muzzily collected his hand baggage to disembark. 

"Enjoy, you two!" said the flight attendant as they walked by her. Aziraphale smiled benevolently at her. Crowley gave him a quizzical look, but didn't ask any clarifying questions as they walked through the airport and out into the bright Italian sunlight. 

In the chaotic mass of taxis, cars, buses, and mopeds jostling for space in front of the airport, Vincenzo's vehicle stood out. The small yellow square-framed car had a large dent in the side, as if a giant had punched the car and crumpled the right door. Vinny himself was a short, balding man in dark clothing, standing with a cigarette clenched between his teeth and holding a sign that said "Francisco and Ashhole."

Aziraphale and Crowley stopped on the sidewalk, holding Aziraphale's trunk between them, and surveyed the scene. Spotting Vinny, Aziraphale paled. "You, ah, don't suppose that's our ride, do you?" he asked. 

Crowley grimaced. "Francis and Ashtoreth," he said. "Blessed Dowling and his _ blessed _travel agent." 

"Well, there's no need to use that kind of language," Aziraphale said. "I assure you, my side has nothing to do with that one."

"You sure about that?" Crowley asked as they drew closer and the glimmer of a gold crucifix necklace became visible aaround Vinny's neck. His deep-set dark eyes glimmered at them assessingly as he stepped forward. 

"Francisco?" he asked in a gravelly smoker's voice. 

"Francis, actually," answered Aziraphale. 

Vinny nodded. "Francisco, yes. Good Italian name. Very nice."

"Oh," Aziraphale said. "Well, thank you."

"Help us load this baggage, would you?" Crowley asked. 

Turning to Crowley, Vinny threw up his arms, his face lighting up. "Ah! _Bellissima_! The bride!!" 

"Erm," Crowley said. 

"Yes, yes, I take the trunk. Get in, get in! Lots of adventure, I tell you now," Vinny says. "Honeymoon you will remember forever."

"I certainly hope so," Aziraphale said as he allowed Vinny to usher him into the tiny back seat of the car. Vinny then picked up the massive trunk with both arms, hugging it against his chest as he frog-walked to the back of the car. Swearing rapidly under his breath, he tried to fit the metal corners of the case into the trunk of the car. He began shoving, rocking the entire vehicle on its axles. 

With a subtle gesture of Crowley's pinky, the trunk suddenly popped inside the car, startling Vinny, who flew forward against the car, then reared back, clutching at his forehead. 

Aziraphale turned towards him, betrayed. "You promised!"

"Yeah, but, well… demon," Crowley said. "It wasn't going to fit!"

"Perhaps, but it's the principle of the matter," Aziraphale said archly. 

Crowley crossed his arms over his chest, muttering some very unkind suggestions for where Aziraphale could stick his _ principles. _

Vinny placed Nanny's small carpet bag next to the trunk, then slammed it closed. He pulled the cigarette out from between his teeth and threw the butt on the asphalt, grinding it underneath his shoe. He stomped to the front of the car, climbed into the driver's seat, yanked the sticky gear shift out of park, and slammed on the gas pedal. They lurched away from the curb. 

As they pushed and wove through the traffic, several of Vinny's talents made themselves readily evident. First, he drove like he had absolutely no regard for silly things like lanes or personal safety, riding up onto the curb, switching from lane to lane, and accelerating only to jerk to a sudden stop, over and over again. Second, he maintained a steady diatribe in Italian against the other drivers, gesturing with his hands and yelling at other drivers who he believed had cut him off. 

Aziraphale never thought he'd see the day when he would miss Crowley's driving. Even after six millennia on earth, the determined chaos of humanity continued to surprise him. 

After a harrowing journey and several lane changes that defied the laws of physics and common courtesy, Vinny parked, or at the very least screeched to a stop on the side of a street near Verona's main commercial district. He kicked the jammed driver's side door open, then walked around to the back of the car, opening Crowley's door and offering a hand with a simpering smile. Crowley, glaring daggers, took the hand and stepped out of the car. 

Aziraphale climbed out of the car and joined Crowley on the curb of the central plaza. Vinny ushered them away from the car, then pointed across the open space towards a mostly intact Roman arena glowing orange in the light of late afternoon. 

"Amphitheatre! Balcony! Market!" he proclaimed, gesturing sweepingly at the surrounding area. "Perfect for the honeymoon. Very romantic. You enjoy."

He then turned around and walked quickly back to the car, already smoking another cigarette seemingly summoned out of thin air. Crowley and Aziraphale stood on the plaza staring after him. The tiny yellow car screeched away from the curb and forcibly merged into the flow of traffic, earning several honks and loud yells from fellow drivers, which were eagerly returned by Vinny as the vehicle lurched away. 

"He has our luggage," Crowley said. 

"I'm sure it'll be… stored safely," Aziraphale said, sounding rather dubious. 

They looked at each other, clad in their respective nanny and gardener vacation disguises, then looked around at the broad stone plaza dotted with pigeons and benches. 

The strange tension from the cottage hung in the air between them. It was one thing to work side-by-side, and quite another thing to do something as human and mundane as sightseeing in each other's company. A lack of familiarity was not the cause of the tension-- far from it. It was strangely comfortable, as if there was no heavenly war and they had never been enemies in the first place. 

"Well," Aziraphale said, turning his shoulders towards the arena. "Shall we?"

He extended his arm, a deeply-ingrained chivalrous gesture of previous centuries, then waited awkwardly as Crowley stared at him. He was beginning to feel foolish when Crowley tentatively stepped forward and looped his arm around Aziraphale's proffered elbow. 

"We must, ah, keep up appearances!" Aziraphale said. "For the disguise."

"Right," Crowley murmured. "The disguise."

They began walking arm-in-arm across the plaza, weaving their way through touring school groups and other couples wrapped around each other. In a small entrance hallway, Aziraphale paid for the tickets with real human cash, acquired from an actual bank in the UK. He completed the purchase with an unusual level of excitement, making the cashier suspicious, and carefully stored the receipt in his inner jacket pocket. 

They walked into the dark inner hallway of the ruined arena, standing in a tall arched corridor that traced the perimeter of the structure and echoed with the sound of dripping water. Pulling Aziraphale away from the informative signs, Crowley began the climb up into the light. He clung to Aziraphale's arm, hindered by the long lengths of nanny's skirts, as they labored their way up the tall limestone steps. 

They reached the top of the stairs and walked through a short passageway, emerging onto the tall stone stands halfway up the open-air arena. Aziraphale took a deep breath and looked around, eyes clouded over with the memory of an intact arena filled with screaming spectators thronging the blood-soaked sands. He blinked, and the vision was gone. The arena, though standing, was weathered, the upper decorative arches long since crumbled away; only tourists climbed up and down the massive stone steps. 

"Were you ever here, angel?" Crowley asked. "In the day, I mean."

"Small blessing for a gladiator in combat. He was supposed to survive to save the life of a future saint, I believe," Aziraphale said. "But that was a long time ago." 

Crowley nodded. "It was at that."

"Were you here, then?"

"Ehhh, it was a while ago. Can't recall." Crowley said, turning to look up to the clouds drifting over the edge of the arena. "Fancy a climb?"

They walked around the ring to the set of steps on the inside of the arena and climbed the gradual slope to the top of the bowl. They reached the metal fence wrapped around the top edge, looking out at a modern city unfamiliar to both of them. 

"Strange, isn't it," Crowley said. "All those gladiator fights were just good entertainment, back in the day. Wait a few millennia, suddenly it's barbaric."

"One man's justice is another's tragedy," Aziraphale said. He watched a set of teenage girls sit down on the other side of the arena and raise their arms like they were cheering in the crowd as another woman took their picture. "Yet at the same time, they change so little. Same vices, same preoccupations. It's truly extraordinary to witness."

"Amazing they've lasted this long, really," Crowley said. 

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Aziraphale said. "They're very resilient. No, I believe they'll survive longer than anyone in heaven or hell anticipated. Assuming we can divert this impending apocalypse, of course." 

"So they can go back to destroying the planet on their own time," Crowley said. 

"Have a little faith, my dear."

"Never been very good at that," Crowley said. 

"Be that as it may," Aziraphale continued. "Humanity may surprise us yet. We are in one of the Bard's great cities, are we not? 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy?'"

"Speaking of which," Crowley said, looking back out over the city through his small round sunglasses as the wind picked at his tightly-set curls. "Care to visit the balcony?" 

"Which balcony?"

"Y'know. _ The _balcony. Romeo & Juliet and all that, 'in fair Verona where we lay our scene?'"

"_The _balcony is fictional," Aziraphale said archly. 

"Come on," Crowley said, slipping his arm through Aziraphale's once again. "We're on vacation." 

The winding streets of Verona were well-lit and clean, lined with glass-paned shops selling expensive wares. They followed the stream of the gelato-eating crowd gawking at the luxury fashions and chattering their way through the narrow pedestrian walkways. 

The Romeo & Juliet balcony, when they reached it, was surrounded by a crowd of American, British, and German tourists shoving and jostling forward. They shouldered their way through the crowd, which parted miraculously easily, into a wide corridor which led to the inner courtyard overlooked by the famous stone balcony. Down below the balcony in the small courtyard, a group of college students were reaching for the breasts of a statue of Juliet, the brass worn shiny by thousands of groping hands. 

"I say," Aziraphale said. "That seems rather uncalled for."

"It's good luck!" piped up a short American tourist in front of them. "She brings love to the lonely, if you ask her!!"

"And…. one must rub her, ah, womanly accoutrements in order for the wish to be fulfilled?"

"Her breasts? Yeah!!" the woman replied. 

"She dies in the play," Crowley said, deadpan. "You know that, right?"

"Well, yeah, everybody knows that," she said. "Come on! Maybe it'll bring you luck."

Crowley and Aziraphale glanced at one another, then stepped closer together, Crowley once again taking Aziraphale's arm. Standing entwined together was beginning to feel natural.

"We're, erm. Newlyweds," Crowley said. "On our honeymoon, actually. So no need for luck."

"Oh! Congratulations," the woman said, looking confused at their stiffness. "Here's hoping your marriage goes better than hers did!" she said with a chuckle, gesturing at the statue of Juliet. 

Neither Crowley nor Aziraphale laughed. Both were busy imagining the horrible retribution of heaven and hell if they were discovered working together: painful discorporation, lectures, burning pits of sulfur, disapproving stares, paperwork, and, horror of horrors, _ The Sound of Music. _

"...right," the woman said. "Well, I'm totally gonna touch her boob. Have fun, guys!" 

Aziraphale looked up again at the balcony hanging over the courtyard, currently occupied by a tourist who had paid extra for the privilege of entering the home and was busy gleefully photographing the crowd of plebians below. He sighed. _ Humans. _

"Want to get smashingly drunk on Italian wine?" Crowley asked. 

"Yes. Yes, let's do that," Aziraphale said. 

Working their way out through the crowd, they re-emerged onto a cross-street and began walking down a corridor at random. Aziraphale resolved to entirely abstain from miracles during the trip (well, almost entirely. Mostly. Within reason?). Still, he didn't need a miracle to use his ability, honed over the centuries, to find tiny tucked-away restaurants where the chef was a little old lady who cooked with delectable secret family recipes stored only in her own head. 

Verona was no different. After a few turns, a brief jaunt down an alleyway, and an abrupt about-face halfway down a block, there it was: a small storefront with peeling green paint and two tables tucked against the glass window. 

"This will do nicely," Aziraphale said, beaming. 

Crowley rolled his eyes fondly behind his sunglasses. They approached the small restaurant and entered, ringing the bell above the door. Behind the counter on the left wall, a waitress looked up, sizing them up. She grabbed two menus, walked out from behind the corner, and led them through a narrow doorway to a small back room by the kitchens. Selecting the back table in a dark corner, she laid down the menus and lit a candle.

Crowley and Aziraphale dutifully sat down. Aziraphale took deep breaths, smiling as he detected the scents of different dishes wafting from the kitchen. 

"Two aperol spritz to start," Crowley said. 

"It may take a moment for us to decide," Aziraphale said sheepishly. "For me to decide, really."

The waitress nodded, giving them a knowing smile as she walked away to fetch their drinks. 

They looked at each other, then down at the small table. Their hands rested inches apart. 

"How do you suppose he'll find us? With our luggage?" Aziraphale asked. 

"Ehh, alcohol first," Crowley said. "We can worry about that later."

"My favorite bowtie is in that trunk," Aziraphale said, morose. 

Crowley was saved from making more reassurances by the arrival of their cocktails. They normally preferred wines, but there was something exquisite about the light sweetness of a clear orange aperol spritz during an Italian summer. 

After two cocktails each, two bottles of wine split between them, a three-course meal of caprese bread, seasonal seafood risotto, lemon custard, and espresso, both of them had relaxed into the comfort of familiar conversation and excellent alcohol. They'd both leaned forward, gesturing with their hands as they recounted stories from their previous visits to Italy. Aziraphale laughed as Crowley recounted a series of increasingly elaborate disguises he wore while trying to tempt a priest in the sixteenth century. 

"I _ hated _the middle agesss," said Crowley, slashing his right hand through the air. "But… god was 'm job easssy. So many hatsss." 

The waitress smiled at the relaxed pair as she came to clear away their dessert plates and espresso cups. 

"You are from England?" she asked. 

"In a certain sense," Aziraphale said. His cheeks were rosy with the flush of wine. Crowley giggled to himself and poured the last of the wine into his glass. 

"And you are traveling through Italy?" she asked, refilling their water glasses. 

"On our honeymooon," Crowley crooned, then dissolved into snickering again. 

"Ah! Congratulations!" 

"Thank you, dear," Aziraphale said, sincerely. "It was scrumptious, truly. Might we have the check, please?" 

They walked out onto the street with their arms thrown over each other's shoulders, still laughing about nothing in particular. The night was warm and clear, and Crowley instantly felt his eyelids drooping as the laughter died down and they were confronted with an empty street in a strange city. 

"No Vinny," Crowley said. 

"No," Aziraphale agreed sadly. 

"I'wsh we had a hotel," Crowley said. "I want to ssssleep."

He swayed on his feet, and imagined a little too hard. 

In the next instant, they found themselves crashing down onto a queen mattress in a tiny hotel room with cream-colored walls and generic art reproductions. 

"Crowley!" Aziraphale said, struggling to sit up. 

"Oof," Crowley said, staring up at the ceiling, which was spinning quite alarmingly. "What?"

"No miracles!" 

"Eugh," Crowley said, throwing his sunglasses off to the side and toeing out of his shoes. "Too late."

"Oh," Aziraphale said. "Well. Yes."

"Hnmg," Crowley agreed, snuggling back into the mattress. He was finally comfortable and warm, and Aziraphale was watching over him. The thought should not have been as comforting as it was, but he was too tired and drunk to worry about that now. 

"Rather wish we had our luggage," Aziraphale whispered. He turned and looked over at Crowley, who was already asleep. 

He rubbed his hands over his face, blew a breath out between his teeth, and performed a quick miracle. His trunk and Crowley's carpet bag appeared innocently against the wall, as if they'd always been there. After a brief moment of consideration, he pulled an envelope out of thin air containing two sets of train tickets: Verona to Venice, and Venice to Rome. Tucking the envelope inside his jacket, he stooped to untie his shoes, then neatly hung his day clothes in the closet and changed into a pinstripe pajama set pulled from his trunk. 

He looked down at Crowley on the mattress, feeling oddly lucid even as the room began to spin. The urge to run his fingers through the long red curls splayed out across the blanket arose. Walking around the bed, he picked the pair of carelessly abandoned sunglasses up off the floor and carefully placed them on the bedside table. 

Sobering up would be sensible, although he'd resolved not to use any more miracles. Sighing, he laid back down next to Crowley, who was snoring in small whuffling bursts.

Feeling rather silly, he crossed his hands over his chest and closed his eyes. 

The next thing he knew, he was blinking awake with an odd gritty sensation in the corner of his eyes. He was warm; _ very _warm. He looked down to see Crowley blinking awake, his head pillowed on Aziraphale's chest. They had entwined their legs over the course of the night, and Aziraphale had both arms wrapped over Crowley's back. 

"Ngk," Crowley said. 

"Oh," Aziraphale said. "Ah-"

"I didn't-"

"I'm really not sure-"

They both stopped, staring at each other. Slowly, Aziraphale pulled his arms away from Crowley, who shivered. They untangled their limbs and shuffled away from each other and sat on the edge of the bed, establishing a foot of space between their hands. 

"Uh," Crowley said. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Aziraphale said, sounding fonder than he intended. "It was simply a matter of our… vessels seeking physical closeness in a drunken state."

"Right," Crowley said, standing to retrieve his sunglasses from the bedside table. He looked around the room, blinking, then spotted the luggage with bemusement. 

"Did we find Vinny last night?" Crowley asked. "I don't think I drank _ that _much."

Aziraphale blushed. "I believed I summoned it," he said. "In my inebriated state."

Crowley smirked. "No miracles, huh?"

"Oh, hush," Aziraphale said. 

Crowley walked over to the luggage against the wall at the foot of the bed and picked up his carpet bag, rummaging around inside. He selected a new outfit, a long dark sundress that featured one of the most daring necklines in Nanny's wardrobe. 

"It's all here. I say we take the first flight home," Crowley said. 

"What?" Aziraphale said. "But we've only just begun the week!"

"And we've already been robbed and abandoned by our guide, watched a bunch of tourists molest a statue, and gotten so drunk that there was... contact!" Crowley said. 

"Contact?"

"You know. Contact. Physical contact," Crowley said, scratching at the back of his head. "Uh. Hugging."

"I believe it could be described as _ cuddling _," Aziraphale said. 

"Watch your mouth," Crowley said. "I do not _ cuddle." _

"Snuggling, even." 

"Shut up."

"It was rather cozy," Aziraphale said. 

"_Anyway, _let's call it quits while we're ahead," Crowley said. "Get back to England before the Dowlings corrupt the Antichrist."

Aziraphale pouted. "I thought we agreed to take an Italian vacation!"

"We have!" Crowley exclaimed. "And it's been a disaster!"

"Not entirely!"

"Ehh, kinda, yeah!!"

"Please?" Aziraphale asked. 

"No!" Crowley exclaimed. 

"I've already bought the train tickets."

"Bought?" Crowley asked. 

"Well, summoned. Please?"

Crowley sighed. "You won't let this go, will you?"

"Positively never," Aziraphale agreed. 

Sighing again, Crowley slumped back against the wall. "Fine," he said. 

"Really??!?" Aziraphale said, bouncing slightly on the mattress in excitement. 

"I said fine," Crowley said. "Where to next?" 

** _Venice_ **

In the light of day, Venice felt like a parody of itself. The streets closest to the bus station and bridge had been cannibalized by the tourism industry, lined with small hotels, countless restaurants, and shops selling cheaply-made carnival masks. For residents, motorized water taxis had long since replaced gondolas as a practical method of transportation. The lagoon reached ever-higher up the steps of grand villas of white stone lining the canals. 

Finding a suitable hotel tucked back in a small alleyway, they deposited their luggage in their room: one bed, again, for two nights. 

They wandered the streets, avoiding the numerous cathedrals for Crowley's sake. Aziraphale bought two carnival masks on a whim from a street vendor, one white mask decorated with feathers, and one dark mask covered in red silk and black lace. He handed the dark mask to Crowley, who took it with begrudging good humor, trying to hide how much he liked the gift. 

Crowley slept, the first night, and woke curled around Aziraphale's thigh as the angel read his copy of Thomas Mann's _ Der Tod in Venedig. _ He shifted away and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Aziraphale simply kept reading, a small smile on his face. 

Their second day was spent wandering the quieter residential sections near the university, eating expensive gelato, and losing their way in the winding streets. Crowley forcibly pulled Aziraphale out of three bookstores and one antiques shop. His shopping bag from the first store was vastly overstuffed with old books and an exquisite antique silver teapot. 

Over the lagoon, the sun began to set, casting long rays shimmering across the waters. The air began to cool. Families of tourists began to give way to night revelers, looking for echoes of carnivals past in hidden corners of the city. 

Aziraphale and Crowley walked arm-in-arm down a street tracing the path of the main canal. They passed a stand of gondolas stationed in the water on the right, and Aziraphale paused. Crowley groaned under his breath. 

"Should we take a gondola ride, do you think?" Aziraphale asked.

"Just a tourist trap, nowadays," Crowley said. 

"Oh, come now," Aziraphale said. "It's still Venice. I insist." 

"It's €80!" Crowley said as they walked close enough to read the sign. 

"I happen to run a successful business," Aziraphale said. "I can afford it."

"You never sell a single book, if you can help it," Crowley said. 

"We're on vacation, my dear," Aziraphale said. "Come along."

They boarded the nearest gondola, assisted by their gondolier, a dark-haired young man with amusement twinkling in his eyes and hands rough from work. Crowley was still grumbling about the price as they settled in the padded chair and folded the blanket across their laps, Aziraphale's purchases at their feet. A dock hand helped them push away from the cobblestone curb of the street, and then they were gliding out into the night. 

They entered the stream of the busy main canal, then slipped into one of the smaller branches that ran into the neighborhoods. Brick walls reached three stories above their heads on either side, forming an artificial canyon. The gondolier began singing, signaling their presence to the other boats. 

Violet water lapped gently against the side of the gondola. No cars passed through the streets of Venice, no trains whistled in the distance. An ancient quiet, like the quiet of a medieval village or an empty field of wheat, engulfed the city. They heard only the rush of water and the dusky voice of their gondolier echoing through empty stone passageways, occasionally interrupted by bursts of laughter and rapid conversation from open windows high above the canals. 

Aziraphale and Crowley fell silent, thrown vividly into centuries-old memories. For thousands of years, nights belonged to the sounds of sleeping and fucking, backed by the ominous rustling of nocturnal animals. Now, nights in London were full of the hum of fluorescent lighting, the din of distant car horns, and the groan of bus engines. The grating sounds of modern life became an unremarkable background, unnoticed until they were no longer present. The quiet of a Venice night belonged to an older era, when life in the city still followed the sun instead of the ticking of a tiny wristwatch. 

A cool breeze off the lagoon blew through the narrow canal, kicking up tiny waves at the edge of the channel. Venice smelled of salt and decay, thousands of years of human history slowly sinking back into the sea. Aziraphale shivered and snuggled in closer to Crowley's shoulder, entirely forgetting he could miracle the cold away. 

They both stayed very still, breathing carefully as the gondola glided forward, sliding under the curve of a low stone bridge. Drunken tourists passed over their heads, their echoing voices seeming to belong to another plane of existence. The gondola was in the sea; separated from humanity. 

Aziraphale recalled illustrations of boats crossing the River Styx on the pages of his mythology book collection. They would never take the human passage to the afterlife, immortal as they were, but this moment felt like a momentous crossing-over into new and unfamiliar territory. As they clung to each other in the shivering moonlight, they both felt strangely cut off from the would. Aziraphale did not think of heaven, Crowley did not think of hell. They were the only two beings in all of creation who really existed. Moonlight caught on their matching wedding rings. 

Everything else had been play-acting, to a certain extent. The wedding was for the benefit of the Dowlings' staff. The honeymoon was at the behest of Sebastian and Harriet. This quiet moment in the moonlit gondola was for them. They felt ageless, weightless, suspended in time like they had been at the wedding reception, yet at the same time, Aziraphale could count every one of Crowley's breaths. He was gripping the demon's thigh, and could not recall taking hold of it. Crowley could feel every fiber of Aziraphale's woolen vest brushing against his hand. 

Standing at the back of the boat, the gondolier sang to the emerging stars. He sang an old song in Italian, mournful and sublime. 

When the gondola returned to shore, Aziraphale and Crowley stood up slowly, like dreamers awakening from a meditative trance. They walked back to the hotel in silence, spent the night curled around each other. Neither of them said a word about it. 

** _Rome_ **

Rome, at least, was familiar to them. Superficially, the people and shops had changed, but the bones of the city remained the same. Old Roman roads still guided traffic routes within the city; ancient ruins provided navigational markers for motorists. Beneath the veneer of modernity, Rome felt _ old. _ An archaeological dig in the city could discover different evidence of human habitation at every level down into the soil. 

Crowley hated it. Being so close to the Vatican made him itchy, which was thoroughly unfair, considering how much sin and corruption had occurred within those walls. 

They booked tickets for the morning on an open-air bus and sat on the top deck, listening to an enthusiastic American expat tour guide tell them about the historical significance of various buildings, monuments, hills, and ruins. Aziraphale was delighted. Crowley was humiliated, and sneezing constantly, especially when the bus turned towards the spire of St. Peter's cathedral. A little old woman sitting behind them to offered him allergy medication and a pack of travel tissues, which he declined. 

Daylight and travel had reasserted the normal standards of their relationship: they were an angel and a demon working together for the common good of humanity, and nothing more (or so they told themselves, repeatedly). Still, they caught each other in lingering glances on the bus tour, and sat closer to each other than strictly necessary. It was like a hangover: they'd felt the sweet rush of forgetting themselves, and although it was slightly uncomfortable in the morning, they longed to allow themselves to return to the heady joy of pretending they were human newlyweds and nothing more. 

They spent the rest of the day wandering the ruins of the ancient Roman Forum, walking through fragments of temples and villas that they could still remember standing whole and filled with worshippers and sellers hawking their wares. 

Ruins surrounded them on all sides as they walked over wide stone flagstones, intact remnants of the original Roman roads. Engraved pillars reached towards the sky, supporting nothing at all. Eroded building facades lay strewn across the grass between two of Rome's most important hills, accompanied by small signs explaining their former purpose and ritual significance. 

"They got that one wrong," said Crowley, pointing towards the remains of the temple of Athena. 

"Oh dear," Aziraphale said. 

They walked towards one of the mostly-intact villas set into the hillside on their right, climbing a long set of marble steps. Continuing up a series of criss-crossing stairways (with only minor complaining from Crowley), they passed a delicately carved fountain centering a grand courtyard halfway up the hill. Tourists gawked at the city skyline being slowly revealed with every step upwards. Crowley and Aziraphale kept climbing. 

Once they reached the top of the enormous hill, they stood at the barrier on the edge of the precipice, the wind rustling in their hair and the entire ruined forum stretched out in the narrow valley below. 

"It all seemed so permanent to the humans of Rome, didn't it?" Aziraphale asked, voice melancholy. 

"Yeah," Crowley agreed. "Lots of marble. Very sturdy-looking."

"And yet it fell," Aziraphale said, musingly. "As all things must." 

Crowley nudged him. "Oh, don't get maudlin," he said. "Come on. Let's head back down. We'll find a wine cellar." 

Aziraphale turned to face him, brow wrinkled. "What if we're not meant to save the world?" he asked. "What if it's meant to fall? It's-"

"Don't say it-"

"Ineffable."

"Oh, don't make this about the Apocalypse," Crowley said. "That's different." 

"How so?"

"This was… human," Crowley said, gesturing out over the railing in front of him at the front edifice of a once-imposing temple. "That's the Almighty playing cruel games on the universe." 

"I hardly think She plays cruel games. Mysterious, perhaps, and sometimes difficult to understand-"

It was, in fact, a card game played in a dark room for unlimited stakes where no one will tell you the rules, and the dealer smiles all the time (as a prophet of recent times has informed us). But that's neither here nor there, nor anywhere in particular. Crowley's position on the matter was-

"Not cruel?" he said. "Not cruel? What do you call giving creatures curiosity, then booting them out the door if they happen to use it?"

"Crowley-" 

"What do you call all this… disease and starvation and war? For _ centuries. _No warning, no free trial. Just pain." 

"To be fair, you have been a major architect of human suffering over the centuries," Aziraphale said, self-righteously. 

Crowley's shoulders slumped in his summer vacation blouse, and Aziraphale winced. 

"Right, so now it's my fault," Crowley said. "Of course. Demon. That means I must enjoy it. Watching humans tear each other to shreds? Oh, yeah. Great entertainment, that." 

There it was: the stark truth between them. No matter how little Crowley was interested in the grand schemes of Hell, he was still a demon. No matter how much Aziraphale was willing to bend the rules of Heaven, he was still an angel. Inescapably, as much as they liked each other, their partnership required luck, lying, and a great deal of ignoring reality. The golden moments on the honeymoon were borrowed time. 

They walked back down the hill in sullen silence. Over the next two days, Crowley followed Aziraphale through archaeological museums, bookshops, and antiques stores of all stripes and sizes, but an uneasiness remained in the air. They were acting again, playing the contented honeymooners in public, and quietly orbiting around each other in private. Topics related to work, from Warlock to the Apocalypse, were studiously avoided. Things left unsaid filled the air between them. Crowley woke up on his side, curled away from Aziraphale, on each of the final two mornings. 

On their final evening in Rome, and the final evening of their journey, they were sitting in front of a cafe in the neighborhood near the Spanish steps. The dying rays of the sun stretched down the street, reflecting off of their mostly empty wine glasses. 

"Well," Aziraphale said. "Not quite as delicately prepared as yesterday's dinner, but wholly satisfactory nonetheless. Done, are you?"

Crowley picked up his black double espresso, downed it in one shot, then slammed it down on the table face-down. 

"Done," he said. He snapped his fingers; the bill paid itself. "Back to the hotel?" 

"We've a long way to go tomorrow," Aziraphale said. "May as well." 

The streets of Rome were not quiet as the streets of Venice, or clean like the central streets of Verona. They wound inexplicable routes in between the straight lines of the ancient Roman roads bisecting the city. Business people powered past them, talking loudly on their phones. Visitors walked arm-in-arm from attraction to attraction, trying to dodge the hawkers forcefully selling tours at each location. 

As they made their way down a narrow street, the corridor suddenly opened into a wide plaza thronged with tourists and lined with gelato stands and souvenir shops. Set down below the main level of the plaza was an enormous white marble fountain, ringed by stairs descending into the basin.

"Oh! The Trevi fountain," Aziraphale said, eyes lighting up. 

"Goody," Crowley said, deadpan. 

"Shall we?" Aziraphale asked. "Since we're here."

"Fine," Crowley said. 

They walked across the plaza and down the first few stairs towards the fountain, finding themselves blocked by a buzzing crowd. Below, they could see the enormous mythological figures of the fountain, which was beautifully carved and crafted with wide pools of clean blue water. Crowley leaned on Aziraphale's arm for support in his heels and skirt as they were jostled by tourists seeking selfie space and searching for coins to throw. 

Aziraphale and Crowley were squeezed on all sides by the enthusiastic human crowd as more tourists climbed down the steps behind them, blocking them in. With a glance that communicated an entire conversation, they turned around and pushed their way out through the crowd, allowing themselves to be ejected out onto the wider plaza surrounding the indented fountain. 

Aziraphale shook his head, looking back at the clamour behind them. "I occasionally rue the day humans invented tourism." 

Crowley nodded. "Fellow named Twoflower, wasn't it?"

"What?" Aziraphale asked as they crossed the plaza and headed down a cobblestoned side street. "Not that I can recall."

"Never mind."

They continued walking down the mostly empty street, in what they assumed was the right direction (and so it would be, even if the streets have to temporarily rearrange themselves). In-sync, their feet struck the ground. Crowley took Aziraphale's arm again, in a conciliatory gesture. 

"Angel?" Crowley said. 

"Yes?"

"I- thank you," Crowley said, looking at the ground. 

"What???" Aziraphale said, concerned. 

"For the trip. It was… eugh. Nice. It was nice."

"Oh," Aziraphale said, entirely flabbergasted. "You're very welcome, dear boy."

Crowley nodded. "And now, we go back. We'll stop it. The Apocalypse, I mean. Won't we?"

"Of course we will," said Aziraphale, not sounding remotely certain. 

Neither of them felt certain of anything in that moment, even things they had felt sure about for thousands of years. They had thought of themselves as an unlikely pair of accomplices, but an inexorable force seemed determined to pull them closer and closer together until their relationship could no longer be defined in human terms. Even when they argued, it felt as natural and inevitable as gravity, and twice as strong. As winged creatures, they were practiced in resisting gravity. Against this force, they were powerless. 

They returned uneventfully to their small hotel. Crowley woke up curled around Aziraphale's thigh the next morning, and stayed resting there a long time after he blinked awake. 

** _Return_ **

They found the Bentley exactly where Crowley left it in the loading zone at the London airport. The entire windshield was papered with parking tickets; two different tow trucks had tried and failed to remove it. The engine roared to life as Crowley turned the key, and the tickets blasted off behind them in a tornado of fines as he accelerated away from the curb. 

The car, pleased with itself and glad to be on the road again, kept playing "I'm in love with my car," no matter what an exhausted Crowley did. Aziraphale, slightly dazed by the mundane absurdity of long-distance human travel, simply gazed out the window as the pulled back through the security checkpoint on the Dowling's estate. 

Ashtoreth returned to work immediately after parking the Bentley and changing into work clothes. She wanted to check on Warlock. Brother Francis had declared he was still on vacation and headed back to the cottage with his trunk. 

Ashtoreth walked through the back entrance, looking slightly tanned and a little worried, although her clothes were tightly starched as ever. She walked past the kitchens, up the back stairway, and into Warlock's room, only to stop short at the sight of Harriet standing alone in the room, frowning at toys strewn across the floor. 

"Ahem," Ashtoreth said, pointedly. 

"Oh! You're back!" Harriet said, whirling around.

"Yes. It had been a week," Ashtoreth said. 

"Right, of course. I must have lost track of time."

"No trouble at all," Ashtoreth said. 

"How was your trip?" Harriet asked, stepping comically high to avoid a pile of legos on the floor. 

"Oh, fine, fine. Lots of… sights seen and such."

"Good. That's good," Harriet, coming to a stop

"Well. I suppose I better return to my duties," Ashtoreth said. "Where's the wee one?" 

"Yes, about that…"

"Is everything alright?" Ashtoreth said, voice sharp. 

"Everything's perfectly fine!" Harriet soothed, mollified by her concern for Warlock. "It's only, well, perhaps I better introduce you to… well. You'll see in a second." 

"Introduce me? To who? You haven't had another baby, have you?" Ashtoreth said, allowing Harriet to pass her by and walk out into the hallway. 

"No, no. Takes a bit longer than a week to make one of those," Harriet said, laughing as she walked down the thickly carpeted hallway. 

"Of course. That was a joke." Ashtoreth said (unconvincingly). 

"Here we are," Harriet said, swinging open a door on the right side of the hallway which was unfamiliar to Ashtoreth. A man and a woman looked up as the door was opened, then smiled in tandem. "Meet Warlock's new tutors, Mr. Cortese and Mrs. Harrison."

"Oh," Nanny Ashtoreth said. "Uh. Hi."

"Nanny!" Warlock cried, making to stand up from a small chair at a table in the center of the bookshelf-lined room. Mrs. Harrison gently restrained him.

"Now, now," she said. "We've not yet completed our lesson."

"But-"

"What have I told you about questions?" Mr. Cortese said menacingly. 

"Come on," Harriet said, herding Ashtoreth out into the hallway. "Have fun, you guys!" she called as she closed the door behind her. 

"They won't replace you, of course," Harriet said. "Not at first. Thaddeus insisted that we start his formal education as soon as possible."

"At first?"

"He won't need a nanny forever," Harriet said. "You knew that, of course."

"Quite," Ashtoreth said, at a loss for words. 

"You had better talk to Thaddeus," Harriet said. 

Ashtoreth nodded. "I'll go… do that, yes." 

She turned her heel and walked away before she did something inadvisable like turning into a giant snake and hissing out her frustration at the adopted mother of the Antichrist. Ignoring Harriet's advice, she stomped her way down the back spiral staircase and out across the gravel lawn. 

She was a demon, the goddamned Serpent of Eden. She didn't have to take this lying down. Aziraphale would help her come up with a plan, and then everything would go back to normal, like the incident with Dowling and the wedding and the honeymoon had never happened. Thrice-bless these distractions; she should never have left in the first place. She began striding across the back lawn towards the gardener's cottage. 

Out at the cottage, Aziraphale pulled his trunk through the front door and flicked the lights on. He startled, clutching at his chest, at the sight of a figure sitting in the floral armchair in the front room. 

"Hello, Aziraphale," Gabriel said. "Enjoy your trip?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dun dun dun dunnnnnnnn*
> 
> There is a discworld reference in here. Terry Pratchett is great. 
> 
> The tutors' names are pulled from book canon, except they're both men in the book. It's implied in the book that Aziraphale and Crowley might be the tutors, but not really confirmed, so that's definitely not the case in this story. 
> 
> Kudos and comments keep my gondola afloat :)


	10. Chapter 10

Crowley stormed down the picturesque garden path, making the bushes on either side quiver and shy away from him. Blossoms curled in on themselves as he muttered and fumed his way towards the cottage he now shared with Aziraphale. 

Sure, he'd basically invented human deception. He genuinely appreciated the artistry of a good plot, provided mentorship for countless conspiracies over the centuries, and tried to encourage scheming whenever possible. That did not mean he would, under any circumstances, tolerate being out-maneuvered by a snivelling slick-haired boot-licking bureaucrat. Demons were not supposed to be outwitted by members of the American government, they were supposed to look on in astonishment as the Americans blundered their way into another situation they didn't understand with utmost confidence and a jaunty smile. Honestly. Demons hardly needed to do anything when the Americans got excited. 

Still grumbling his way through a cloud of crackling discontent, he almost ran straight into the green front door of the cottage, which had been left ajar by Aziraphale a few minutes before. He drew up short. Something was wrong; he could hear voices from the living room. Crowley crept closer to the crack, dropping his best eaves. 

He'd recognize Aziraphale's voice anywhere. The angel sounded stressed, answering in short, flustered sentences. The other voice was lower, and seemed somehow familiar. Stepping closer, he pressed his ear as close to the door as possible, nearly brushing the wood with his shoulder. Straining, he could make out-

Gabriel. 

Shit. Shit_. Shit. _

Reeling back from the door, Crowley looked wildly around for any cover, throwing himself full-bodied to the side and falling ass-over-tits into the leafy perennial hedge beneath the front windows. Leaves caught his hair; branches scratched at his legs, ripping his tights. Hissing, he transformed into a snake, coiling around the base of the bush and doing his best to remain absolutely quiet. His tongue flickered out. He tasted the air, then flinched: Gabriel was filling the area with the static electricity of divine ozone, and the air tasted like a steel pole that had been struck by lightning. The archangel wasn’t pleased. 

Inside the house, a few minutes before, Aziraphale had walked through the door to find Gabriel sitting in the corner of the living room. The archangel had settled into the armchair upholstered with a vibrant pattern of pink flowers and green leaves as if he owned it (not that he would, of course, ever own such a piece of furniture). With his fingers steepled and legs crossed at the knee, he looked like a scheming middle manager about to make a deal in a dark office, but Aziraphale still felt a chill roll down his spine. Subtle power radiated from Gabriel. If the human world was not to his liking, he could order one of his subordinates to correct the aberration, and he could walk away assured in the knowledge that the task would be completed. He knew the measure of his own influence. 

Aziraphale, standing in the doorway, also knew his own power and limitations. He also knew one other thing, although he hated to put it so bluntly: they were fucked. They were so very, very fucked. 

"I received an interesting report last week," said Gabriel mildly. 

"Oh?" Aziraphale said, desperately wishing that he wasn't still dressed an informal outfit from his last-minute vacation wardrobe.

"Do you know what that report said, Aziraphale?" Gabriel asked, voice as pleasantly neutral as if he was inquiring about the weather. 

"No, I haven't the foggiest notion, I'm afraid," Aziraphale answered, failing to match his casual tone. 

"Really," Gabriel said. "Because the report informed me of several unusual miracles in Italy. They were particularly unusual because the angel in question was supposed to be in England, influencing the Antichrist. Three guesses who that angel might have been?"

"Ah," Aziraphale said, resigning himself to an unpleasant afternoon, or perhaps an unpleasant eternity. "Was… was it me?" 

"It _was _you," Gabriel said, smiling. "Which is why it's so funny that you seem not to know why I'm here." 

"Perhaps there was a clerical error?" Aziraphale asked, voice rising to a squeak on the last two words. 

"Are you implying heaven made a _mistake?_" Gabriel asked, false smile vanishing from his face. 

"Oh, no!" Aziraphale said, frowning and shaking his head to show how emphatically he disagreed with that position. "Certainly never that."

Aziraphale shuffled his feet as Gabriel studied him and resolutely resisted the urge to cower. He was an angel of the Lord, and his honeymoon in Italy, although certainly unconventional, was all for the greater good of humanity. He was in the right. Except for the small detail that the trip was taken with a demon, willingly and knowingly, and they'd gotten along rather well, and there had been rather a lot of cuddling, both intentional and unintentional… 

Oh dear. 

"I don't have time for this," Gabriel muttered. "Look, can you just explain to me what you were doing in Italy?" He looked down at the pristine white sheet of paper on the white plastic clipboard in his hand, frowning at a tiny printed list of miracles. "Summoning suitcases, improving airport food, booking train tickets … did you take a _vacation?" _

"Well, you see," Aziraphale said, a convincing lie beginning to dawn on him, along with accompanying pangs of guilt. "The humans around here were beginning to notice that I never took a day off. Constant vigilance, you know, when watching the Antichrist!" He gestured in the air with his fist in a motion which he hoped looked appropriately fierce. "And last week, they absolutely _insisted _I take some time off. I think it's all stuff and nonsense, of course, as an angel, but they could not be persuaded.” 

“So… the humans sent you to Italy?” Gabriel asked, frowning. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, trying very hard to maintain direct eye contact. “And I thought it best to maintain my cover. Purely for the sake of the mission, of course.” 

Gabriel cocked his head to the side, looking like he was chewing over the idea, very slowly. "Why didn't you simply remain in the area and survey the target?" he asked after a moment. 

"The target?" Aziraphale said. "Oh. Quite right. The boy. Er, Antichrist. Well, I would have, but... I thought the Italians needed some miracles! A bit of angelic presence to brighten their lives, as such."

"You thought… the Italians. Needed to be more religious?" Gabriel asked. 

"Yes?" Aziraphale attempted, smiling brightly. 

Gabriel pushed himself up out of the armchair and stepped forward, very slowly. Aziraphale found himself clutching the wooden doorway of the entrance to the hallway, pressing away from the scrutiny. The angelic presence grew stronger as Gabriel's height became steadily more imposing. 

A few feet away from Aziraphale, Gabriel stopped advancing. His smile returned, as false as before, and he clapped his hands around his pristine clipboard. 

"This is certainly unusual," Gabriel said. "Very… unconventional. But I suppose you've never exactly been a typical angel, eh?" 

"No," Aziraphale agreed. "Ha."

Gabriel looked around the living room, taking in the patterned wallpaper, faded rugs, and numerous overstuffed bookshelves. "Nice place you've got here," he said, without an ounce of sincerity. "For keeping your cover, of course." 

Gabriel took a deep breath and sniffed the air, looking around the room in confusion. "Does something smell evil?" 

Something fell into the bushes outside the front window with a loud rustling crash and a good bit of muffled swearing. 

"No, I don't think so!" Aziraphale squeaked, trying very hard not to look at the window to his right, where his peripheral vision had caught a glimpse of Crowley's leg flailing up into the air moments before. 

"Huh," Gabriel said. "Anyway. I've also come to tell you that we're assigning you with some backup.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary-” Aziraphale started, but Gabriel simply kept speaking. 

“Those... people were hiring some teachers for the Antichrist while you were away, so we intervened to make sure one of them was an angel,” he said. “They'd already hired the other one. We suspect influence from our demonic counterparts, but this is a stealth mission. We couldn't exactly get rid of him without them noticing. So. Watch out for that." 

"Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. 

"I thought you'd be pleased," Gabriel said. "We're giving you extra support for your little project! Of course, it's still utterly doomed to failure, but who knows? It could just give us the advantage that we need in the field on Judgment Day.”

Clapping Aziraphale on the shoulder, Gabriel paused. "No more vacations for a while, okay?" he said. "You do great work. I'd hate to have a less... _friendly_ version of this conversation." 

With that, he brushed out the door, pausing a moment to gaze suspiciously at the front bushes outside the living room before he vanished into nothingness. 

Aziraphale sagged against the door frame, breathing out a sigh of relief (not because he needed to breathe, but because it felt suitably dramatic for the occasion). The mounting panic eased, and he let himself relax for a moment before another variety of worries set in. Things had gone too far. What had he been thinking, agreeing to this harebrained marriage scheme? What was he doing_, _conniving with a demon? This went far beyond the scope of their dubiously ethical Arrangement; there was far more at stake than convenience. 

As if summoned by his thoughts, Crowley came barreling into the house. Dirt smudges covered his nannying outfit, and leaves adorned his tousled hair. 

"What the heaven was that?" Crowley asked, breathing hard and brushing off his knees. 

Aziraphale stood up straight in fiery indignance. "_That _is what happens when you don't _listen _to me and insist on using miracles when we _specifically agree that we will not." _

Crowley blanched. "He was asking you about my miracles?" he asked. 

"Well, not quite," Aziraphale said. "Technically speaking, they were my miracles. But you started it!"

Crowley simply smirked. 

"Oh, stop it," Aziraphale said. 

"I didn't say anything."

"Fine," Aziraphale said, sighing. "_Perhaps _mistakes were made on multiple sides. But you _did _start it." 

"Whatever," Crowley said, taking off his hat and hanging it on the rack in the front hallway. He walked past Aziraphale into the living room and threw himself down on his favorite couch, sprawling out immediately. "We've got bigger fish to fry.” 

"Bigger fish to fry?" Aziraphale said, as he followed Crowley into the room, but remained standing. He cast a nervous look at the recently occupied floral armchair. "What fish could be bigger than a visit from an archangel? Heaven was _this close _to discovering our little arrangement because we were careless!"

"Fine," Crowley said. "I can be… careful. Subtle. Stick to the shadows, and all that."

"This whole situation has gotten completely out of hand," Aziraphale said, wringing his hands. "What happens if… if Gabriel shows up while we're eating dinner together? How will I explain that away?" 

Crowley froze, sitting up slowly on the couch. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know!" Aziraphale said. "You don't think that perhaps… perhaps it would be best if we went our separate ways, for now?" 

"Ngk- w-what??" Crowley spluttered. "You- we- absolutely not!" 

Aziraphale sighed, taking a step closer to him. "It seems we're only endangering each other, dear boy," he said. "It's in our natures. It's for your own protection, really. Not that I'm concerned about protecting you, of course, as you are a demon, but. Even so." 

"Protection?" Crowley asked, throwing out his arms. "What about protecting me from Dowling perving all over me? What about that?" 

"I'm sure you can handle a single human," Aziraphale said. 

"It's not about 'handing it!'" Crowley said. "I would just light him on fire or get him fired, but- but- humans!! All these asinine conventions, and- gender roles, and, eugh. Never mind." 

Aziraphale blinked at him. "I’m sorry," he said. “I'm afraid I don't understand.” 

"Oh, never mind," Crowley said. "Let's just say there's a reason human women haven't figured this one out yet." 

"Yes, I suppose you must be right."

"Of course I'm right," Crowley snapped, "Trust me."

Aziraphale flinched. That was the whole issue, really. He still felt unsettled by Gabriel's intrusion into their home, but found himself relaxing in Crowley's presence. What kind of angel did that make him?

"So,” Aziraphale said, shaking himself out of his thoughts. “You think we should figure it out together, ignoring both common sense and the threat of imminent danger."

"Yes!" Crowley said, leaning forwards. "It'll work, it has to. Besides, you promised." 

"Oh, I don't know, Crowley," Aziraphale said. “I really don’t know.” 

"Aziraphale," Crowley said, voice suddenly quiet and earnest. Without noticing, he began fiddling with the engagement ring on his left hand, running his fingers over the embedded rubies.

Aziraphale sighed, visibly wavering. His eyes were drawn to Crowley's hands, involuntarily.

"Come on," Crowley tempted. 

"Oh, all right," Aziraphale said. "I'll help you, for now. But only because the fate of the world literally hangs in the balance, and not as a personal favor."

"Thank… Somebody," Crowley said, leaning back into the couch. "Now. First, we get rid of those... _imposters_. I'll be damned if they replace me that easily."

"You're already damned," Aziraphale pointed out. With one more suspicious look at the armchair, he walked over and sat down in it. "Anyway, you may have your work cut out for you. I have it on good authority that one of them is an angel."

"Really?” Crowley asked. 

"The other might very well be a demon," Aziraphale said. 

_"What???"_

"Exactly," Aziraphale said. "What's the phrase?”

“Oh,” Crowley said. “Uh. ‘Bollocks?’” 

“No,” Aziraphale said. 

“Uh, what’s the one that all the humans are saying these days,” Crowley said. “‘Fuck my life?’”

"No, nothing so vulgar- the Tolkien one," Aziraphale said. "Ah, yes. 'Out of the frying pan into the fire? Yes, I think that sums it up rather nicely.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said glumly, rubbing at his eyes. “Yeah, got it in one.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I envision having this much plot when I started writing this thing? No. But I do hope you're enjoying it. Please let me know what you think!! Comments and kudos keep my cauldron burbling.
> 
> I'm sorry that they keep arguing with each other, but this is a long way before the apocalypse, and Aziraphale's still having a lot of doubts. 
> 
> Also, I cannot spell today for the life of me (I spelled intrusion as introsuion and fingers as ringers while attempting to write this chapter) so if you notice an error, please let me know.


	11. Chapter 11

Nanny Ashtoreth bustled into Warlock’s dark bedroom as usual on Monday morning, allowing the light from the hallway to stream into the dark room. The situation with the Dowlings, Warlock, Aziraphale, and the tutors was obviously less than ideal, and things had definitely become more complicated than they initially intended, but she had come to the Dowling home with one simple purpose: influence the Antichrist for the worst. No human would stand in her way.

“Good morning, young prince of darkness,” she said, directing her voice to the dark outline of the bed in the center of the room. “Come on. You can sleep in when you’ve taken your eternal throne after the end of the world.”

She walked across to the window and threw open the heavy red brocade curtains, releasing a small cloud of dust into the air. She blinked at the sudden influx of weak sunlight, her snake pupils readjusting, and paused a moment. Across the lawn, a stream of smoke rose from the chimney of the gardener’s cottage, where she’d left Aziraphale sitting after a cup of morning tea.

Shaking herself, she turned to check on Warlock, and turned to find only sheets neatly folded on an empty bed.

She took a step forward, disbelieving her eyes. Warlock had been tucked into bed as usual, she was sure of it. He never got up on his own, preferring to remain in bed until the last possible moment, which Ashtoreth encouraged (sloth was an admirable quality in an Antichrist).

Cautiously, awaiting a prank of some kind, she went down on her knees, leaned down low, and lifted the bedskirt, peering into the dusty darkness under the bed. Other than some truly alarming dust bunnies and a shoe box hiding childish treasures, she found nothing.

"What on earth are you doing?" came Harriet Dowling's unexpected voice from behind her, and Nanny nearly pitched forward to the floor in surprise before catching herself and scrambling to her feet. She adjusted her rucked-up blouse, trying very hard to appear nonchalant.

"Harriet!" she said. "Ah. Where's Warlock?"

"With the tutors, of course," Harriet said. "An early start is critical for his development, you know, and we only want the best for our son."

Ashtoreth stared. It was 8 am, Warlock was five years old. He could barely pay attention when Nanny's stories about the apocalypse went on too long, and those usually involved explosions and the world ending in fire. How on earth were they planning on keeping a sleepy child's attention for more than five minutes?

Her mouth said none of this. Her mouth plastered on a fake smile and said, "Right, right, of course." She was grateful for this.

The week did not improve from there.

Whenever Crowley tried to pull Warlock away to be positively influenced by Aziraphale or simply enjoy a break, the tutors would find them within the hour, tutting about schedules and targets.

The angel, Mrs. Harrison, kept glaring at Nanny like the force of her stare alone could counteract the demonic influence. She pulled Warlock away at every opportunity to explain the rules of things: the serene order of nature, and the inevitable triumph of light over dark.

Ashtoreth, watching a bird shit on a nearby flower pot, grumbled to herself that if nature had any serenity or order, she'd yet to see evidence of it. She scuffed her shoes against the gravel of the garden path and watched Mrs. Harrison lead Warlock inside by the hand. Warlock kept twisting, looking back at his nanny with a plaintive expression, but Mrs. Harrison's grip was firm, and Mr. Dowling was smirking at them from his vantage point in a downstairs window. Ashtoreth felt her blood boiling in her veins, grit her teeth, and followed after them.

As soon as he knew what to look for, Crowley couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized from that start that Harrison was an angel; self-righteousness practically oozed off of her. She was inhabiting the corporation of an athletic-looking young woman with long brown hair and a look in her startling blue eyes that proclaimed to the world, “I have found God, and because I am incredibly pleased with myself about this, you will continue to hear about it until you come to worship with me.”

Her teaching curriculum tended towards biological sciences and ethics, always emphasizing the rules governing a situation. She also assigned bedtime reading, always exceptionally complicated and never remotely appropriate for a five-year-old’s reading comprehension level.

Ashtoreth simply glared at her books until they transformed into something more interesting, like _The Hobbit _(of course, Nanny Ashtoreth emphasized that the major takeaway was that small beings can wield great power. If Warlock happened to use some of his power to get rid of his new tutors, then it would be like getting rid of a fire-breathing dragon crouched on a pile of treasure. So far, it didn’t seem to be working).

By the end of the first week trying to take care of Warlock while navigating around the tutors and their precious schedules, Ashtoreth was ready to light something on fire with her mind. The overly complicated worksheets that the pair kept assigning to Warlock as homework kept inexplicably flinging themselves out the window, and the papers were regularly returned from the gardens uncompleted and with singed corners, much to the displeasure of Mr. Cortese and Mrs. Harrison.

The demon, Mr. Cortese, was currently presenting himself as a short, narrow-shouldered man in his late thirties. His demonic animal aspect kept flagging in Crowley’s peripheral vision, drawing his attention to nothing at all; he eventually decided that the animal perched on Cortese’s head was either a naked mole rat or the strangest fish he had ever seen.

He taught history, politics, and saucy literature at a five year old level, sticking to the classics but adding strangely personal twists to his descriptions of famous conquerors and kings. Little Warlock, seated at his tiny desk, looked on wide-eyed as Mr. Cortese gestured to poorly drawn chalkboard figures and told him about the advantages of strong leadership, bloody conquest, and drinking fermented mare’s milk like the great Mongol leader Chinggis Khan.

Warlock, who had never considered the possibility of conquering most of Eurasia or drinking mare’s milk, was fascinated. Nanny pulled him away from his lessons resentfully at the end of each day, listening to Warlock excitedly rattle off facts about Alexander the Great’s hairstyling techniques and Napoleon’s unfortunate toenails.

Cortese also kept trying to talk to Ashtoreth, and although she had so far succeeded in avoiding him, he was beginning to wink at Nanny whenever she entered the room, out of desperation. Crowley did not care for him, not remotely.

Crowley couldn't get a moment's peace. The tutors, usually Mrs. Harrison, would arrive promptly after Warlock’s breakfast and whisk him away for a full morning of educational activity, never mind how much Nanny Ashtoreth protested that five year old boys needed to do normal things like run around scraping their knees.

The Dowlings also increased their presence in Warlock’s rooms, constantly stopping by to casually check up on things. Visitors from Thaddeus were particularly annoying-- he started with a smirk and ended with a lecture, on a good day.

By the end of the week, Crowley was beginning to wonder whether the psychological effects of the Antichrist witnessing a horrific accident where his father and two tutors were mysteriously jettisoned off into space would be bad enough to doom the world. Perhaps Warlock could therapeutically incinerate something that nobody needed anyway, like a golf course, or possibly Manchester.

As he tried to fall asleep on Friday evening, exhausted by the trials of the week, Crowley found himself staring at the ceiling instead, restless. Aziraphale was absorbed in his book, or at least courteously pretending to be.

The situation had gotten ridiculously complicated, and not the kind of complicated that he enjoyed. Figuring out how to manipulate the M25 into the dreaded symbol odegra? A lovely exercise for his brain. This situation? Exactly the kind of operatic human nonsense he tried to avoid.

Now he had to pretend to be married to Aziraphale whenever the Dowlings or their staff were paying attention, especially when Mr. Dowling was smirking at him, but he couldn’t interact with Aziraphale when either of the tutors were around, because they might report back to their respective head offices, not to mention that the tutors were making him want to tear his own hair out at the root.

And worst, worse than all that, was the fact that he felt absolutely natural and comfortable lying in this bed beside Aziraphale when their precarious Arrangement was threatening to crash down on their shoulders at any moment. Being together felt _right_, and though he’d spent several thousand years determinedly hiding his feelings, constant close proximity was reminding him how deeply he loved the angel, and how little he would be able to cope if this mission went south and they were forcefully pulled apart again.

Christ.

Ooh, no. Not that. Uh. Antichrist? No. That was rather the whole problem. He shifted uncomfortably, flipping over and kneading his pillow. 

“What’s the matter, dear?” Aziraphale asked, putting his book down onto the tartan bedspread.

“Nothing,” Crowley said. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Uh,” Crowley said. “Lots. Too much. Don’t bother.”

Aziraphale sighed, leaning back against the headboard. He reached out a hand to rest against Crowley’s shoulder. The warmth felt lovely. “It has gotten rather complicated, hasn’t it?” he said.

Crowley snorted. “Understatement of the millennium,” he said, rolling over onto his back and looking backwards up at the angel.

Azirpahale hummed. He looked prim in a matching pajama set and night cap. Crowley desperately wanted to snuggle up against his soft corporation. 

“I don’t know how much longer I can put up with this,” Crowley groaned, throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes.

"I've rather been thinking the same thing."

"...what?" Crowley said, uncovering his eyes. 

“I know, I know, I promised to see this through with you," Aziraphale said with a sigh. "And I intend to keep that promise, I really do. But it seems to me like things have gotten rather out of hand, and I'm not sure how much good-- and evil, of course-- we're really doing by staying here."

"You want to _leave_?" Crowley asked incredulously, pushing up onto his elbows. "After all that. We got _married_, just so they wouldn't have an excuse to get rid of us, and now, what. You want to throw in the towel?"

"My dear-" Aziraphale began, pressing his lips together when Crowley kept talking.

"I can't believe you want to just- give up!" Crowley said. "Might as well fuck off to some other galaxy, since we're clearly doing a fat lot of good here!"

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, evenly. "Just… think about it, please. Now. He's currently being tutored by both an angel and a demon. Don't you see? Heaven and hell have effectively provided us with replacements, and I think we should take the opportunity to leave before Dowling takes any more… liberties."

"Yeah, but they're- they're not-" Crowley spluttered, sitting up all the way.

"Not what?" Aziraphale asked.

"Not- me! Not us," Crowley said.

"Ah," Aziraphale said, with a knowing look. "Well, that's certainly true."

"Oh, don't give me that," Crowley said. "What?"

Aziraphale looked at him cautiously. "I know you're fond of the boy," he said.

An outrageous accusation. Just because Crowley felt an unpleasant lump forming in the pit of his stomach at the thought of anyone else tucking Warlock into bed at night did not mean he was remotely fond of the boy. 

"Fond? I'm not fond. I never said I was _fond," _Crowley said. "Demons don't do _fond._"

"Fine," Aziraphale said, sighing. "You’re not _fond _of him, but I certainly am. And I’m beginning to wonder how much good we’re doing by staying here.”

"Oh, right, so that’s a reason to leave," Crowley said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He felt the sudden urge to turn into a snake and slither under the bed, to avoid all his responsibilities. “After everything, _everything _that we’ve gone through and all the effort we put into staying here, that’s a great bloody reason to leave.”

“Crowley, where are you going?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Nowhere,” Crowley said. “Nowhere. Just… out.”

He stood up, and with a snap, his sunglasses were on his face. It wasn't quite as good as hiding as a snake, but at least his eyes couldn't give him away. He walked out the bedroom door, down the hallway, and out onto the dark grounds of the estate at night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a bit stuck on this chapter, hope it's okay. 
> 
> I would like to emphasize that they still love and support each other, but they're in a tough situation and disagreeing because of it. Because this is before the Apocalypse, and they're still hiding how they feel quite a bit. Everything will turn out for the best! I promise!


	12. Chapter 12

After Crowley’s abrupt exit, Aziraphale remained seated on their bed for about an hour, fretting very thoroughly. 

They bantered back and forth on a fairly regular basis, as a natural consequence of their different natures and loyalties in the cosmic struggle, but there was always a fond undertone to their bickering. This argument, however, felt different, and even his warm pajama set and comforting tartan bedspread couldn’t save him from feeling cold and alone in their shared bedroom. It felt like the holy water argument all over again, and Aziraphale desperately hoped that Crowley would not be absent for another century. The world would end before they saw each other again, if that was the case.

A small, scared part of him insisted he should chase after Crowley and apologize for whatever he’d said, but he suppressed the urge. An angel had to maintain a certain level of dignity. He had standards, for Heaven's sake, and he was absolutely not in the wrong here. Crowley was simply being dramatic, and with some consideration, he would come to see that Aziraphale was right: they would be unnecessarily endangering themselves by remaining with the Dowlings with the complicating factor of another angel and demon circling the Antichrist. 

Perhaps he should leave Crowley alone to consider and come to his own logical conclusion. He always returned in time, throughout the centuries, and surely he would recognize the gravity of the situation. Then again, they'd never before pretended to be married to each other. Although it was simply another convenient way to accomplish their goals, another manifestation of the Arrangement, it still felt different, arguing with one's spouse, pretend or otherwise.

This whole situation was objectively absurd, but Aziraphale couldn't shake the feeling that they'd just had a break-up, in a certain sense. Perhaps it would be better to go talk to Crowley rather than allowing him to stew in his own anger. Would that seem desperate? Would chasing after him amount to Aziraphale showing his cards, like the dark and dashing hero of a romance novel chasing after the heroine to beg her to come with him, laying all his feelings on the line? 

He stood up, cinching his red quilted nightgown more securely around his waist and slipping on his gray wool slippers. They were immortal beings, not human teenagers. They could have a conversation and resolve this juvenile tension between them. Warlock, as the Antichrist, was the priority in all of this; surely, they could agree on that. 

Descending the stairs, he walked out onto the front stoop, taking a breath of the crisp night air. The night was clear, with the first cold touches of fall chilling the dew on the grass and making the flowers curl into themselves. The pathway and front lawn were empty of any demons, familiar or otherwise. There were only the lights shining from the house, visible across the lawn, and the hum of crickets singing in the bushes. 

He reached out with his angelic senses, looking for any sign of Crowley. As he extended himself, traces of love illuminated across the grounds like fireflies, showing him where people had spent time caring for the things they loved. The flowers glowed with his own attention and Crowley’s furtive assistance. Light blanketed the walls of the main house, shining particularly bright from Warlock’s bedroom-- if nothing else, they had ensured that the Antichrist was well-loved. 

And there, in a field a few hundred feet away from their home, nearly to the edge of the property, was Crowley, blazing with the markers of Aziraphale’s own love. 

As he walked towards Crowley, Aziraphale thanked the Almighty, not for the first time, that demons lost the ability to sense love when they fell. This whole situation was embarrassing enough already, they didn’t need to add that additional factor into the mix. 

When Aziraphale reached the field, ringed by shivering outlines of dark trees, he found Crowley. The demon was sprawled out on his back, hands folded across his stomach, impossibly long legs splayed at improbable angles, staring up at the sky with a dissatisfied expression. He’d removed his sunglasses, holding them against his chest as his yellow pupils glittered in the dark. 

Crowley sighed when he heard Aziraphale approach, but made no attempt to move away or sit up, keeping his gaze locked on the night sky. 

“Hello, my dear,” Aziraphale said softly, shifting from foot to foot in the damp grass as he hovered awkwardly over the supine demon. “Are you quite all right?” 

“'S sssad," Crowley said instead of returning his greeting, wincing as he hissed. 

"What, the stars?" Aziraphale asked, peering up at the night sky. A few constellations were visible, but the light pollution from London stained the surrounding area, obscuring most of the stars with a haze of yellow light. 

"Used to be so many of them," Crowley said. "Hung them myself, you know. Lots of them, anyway. Did I tell you that? Sure I told you that. Anyway. ‘S sad. Blessed light pollution.” 

After a moment of consideration for his poor clothing, Aziraphale sat down on the grass beside Crowley and laid down beside him, staring up at the sadly diminished night sky. 

There was Hercules, hanging above their heads. He’d been quite congenial in real life, although prone to poor decision making. Aziraphale squinted at the familiar constellation, remembering humans sitting around campfires in past centuries, arguing about the shapes of the stars. A lost art, in his opinion. 

Crowley sighed again, shifting in discomfort. “I’m sorry for running out like that,” he said. 

“I’m sorry as well,” Aziraphale said. 

“For what?” Crowley asked. 

“For… the whole situation, really,” Aziraphale said, crossing his hands over his stomach to mirror Crowley’s posture. He could feel the cold dampness of the grass seeping into his hair. 

“Me too,” Crowley said softly, turning to look at Aziraphale lying on the grass next to him. “And… I do. Care about the boy, I mean. Don’t you dare tell another living soul. Or immortal soul. Anybody. I mean it.” 

Aziraphale’s lips twitched in amusement, and he mimed zipping his lips closed. “Rest assured of my discretion,” Aziraphale said. “No one will ever suspect you of soft-heartedness on account of me.” 

Crowley snorted. “Whatever you say, angel,” he said, turning back to the stars. 

They remained silent for a moment, watching a satellite sail across the sky. The red lights of a plane blinked over the house, then disappeared behind the treeline. 

“So,” Crowley said. “You want to leave.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “You and I both know that things can’t go on like this.” 

Crowley began fiddling with Nanny Ashtoreth’s wedding ring on his finger, running his fingers over the embedded rubies. 

“That eager to escape being married to me, are you?” Crowley said with a mirthless chuckle. 

“No!” Aziraphale said, then hesitated. That had sounded rather vehement, and rather too much like the truth. 

Truthfully, he enjoyed the way Crowley curled around his thigh in sleep. He enjoyed the domesticity of a morning cup of tea, shared without a second thought in their small cottage kitchen. He had greatly enjoyed their travels through Italy, and the simple joy of having a good excuse to spend time with Crowley. All of those things, he would miss dreadfully. If this situation with the tutors, and the Dowlings, and Warlock, and their superiors, however, resulted in Crowley being exposed or getting hurt, Aziraphale would never be able to forgive himself. He was honestly astonished that they hadn’t been discovered already. 

The marriage had been a harebrained plot in the first place, he recognized that now. It was time to end this farce before things went too far, and they forgot that there was a way out of this mess. They could leave. There was no formal obligation to stay, and Warlock was old enough that the key aspects of his personalities had already been formed. An angel and a demon would continue to influence him up close, and Aziraphale and Crowley could observe from a distance, detached. It would be fine. It would be safe. They could still save the world, but without the risk. 

“No,” Aziraphale repeated softly, trying to find some way of phrasing his thoughts that would make Crowley understand, without _really _allowing Crowley to understand. Good Lord, that would be embarrassing. 

Crowley was still looking at him curiously. Time to choose his words carefully. 

“Look,” Aziraphale said, swallowing his nerves. “We came here to ensure that the Antichrist would have influence from both sides. In that regard, we’ve succeeded, and by sheer coincidence, he will continue to be influenced by his tutors. An angel and a demon. Balanced. I understand, I really do, that you would rather not leave, but consider the consequences if we’re discovered. Gabriel was already in our living room!” 

Aziraphale felt his voice rising, and looked nervously over at Crowley, who… was nodding. His eyes looked suspiciously wet, moisture glittering on his cheeks in the dark, but perhaps that was the quickly-forming dew. 

“I understand that I cannot make this decision for you,” Aziraphale said. “But. I believe the risk has begun to outweigh the reward, and I will not remain here any longer. The boy will be cared for. And… if you will allow me to show some concern for your well-being, out of concern for the future of the world, of course, I would not risk you either. Not when we have the choice.” 

“All right,” Crowley said, voice defeated. 

“All right?” Aziraphale asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows. 

“Yes,” Crowley said. “All right. You’re… right. Agh.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale said, voice shaky, “If you say so. I suppose there’s a first time for everything.” 

Beside him, Crowley sat up, sliding his sunglasses back on his face despite the late hour and drawing his knees up into his chest. His arms came to rest against his knees, and he curled in on himself, his entire body slumping downwards. If they had been visible, his wings would be drooping, Aziraphale suspected.

“I’ll give notice in the morning,” Crowley said in a small, hollow voice. 

Aziraphale nodded, throat suddenly dry. He began rotating his own wedding ring around his finger, pressing the indent of the metal into his corporation’s flesh. They were leaving. It was the right decision. They would be safe, and their mission still had a high chance of success. 

He wished desperately, in that moment, that winning this argument felt like a victory. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one! I lost a bit of momentum on this story, but I've been planning this chapter for a while. We are winding down to the end, and leaving the main angst behind us. Except for the apocalypse, of course, but that's a minor detail in the grand scheme of things. 
> 
> Thanks for your comments and kudos!! They motivate me to finish this thing. It may be a little while before I update again, because I have a lot of real-life commitments in the next few weeks, but this story will certainly be finished before the end of the year. 
> 
> If you like this one, go read my other GO story, called For All the Stars in Heaven, which is complete and very silly!

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr @thebeatlesaremyboyband


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